Darkest Days
by The Mad Poet
Summary: Time is not a circle--history does not repeat. But time -is- a spiral, and sometimes the past wanders back to haunt us. . . The apparently long-awaited first story of my trilogy. Angsty. Ye Gods, it lives! Chapters 12 and 13 up! YAY!
1. The Game Begins

**DISCLAIMER:** I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Author's Note: **Okay! Finally! This chapter will PROBABLY be the worst, because A> It's the first draft of the original first chapter I wrote waaaaay back before Ken was even good again in the english version and B>i can't write first chapters worth beans.  
This story is faintly AU from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after teh realease of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02  
_________________________________________________________  
**  
1  
The Game Begins**  


  
  
At this point, the game didn't matter anymore.  
  
But then maybe it never had, Ken reflected as the soccer ball slammed into the net, jerking it violently back. It wasn't as if he played much outside of the team . . .so why was he out here in the rain now? Hadn't Daisuke invited him over . . .?  
  
With a sigh, he blew at the wet dark hair that hung in his face, and jogged down the muddy field to retrieve the ball. Anyway, it didn't matter what Daisuke had said or done--Ken needed this right now. He pulled the ball from where it had gotten caught in the webbing of the net, and cast a glance as he straightened to where Wormmon sat on the sideline bleachers, watching him with those always-sad blue eyes of his. Ken hated that--he knew it wasn't true, of course, but he always felt that those eyes were judging him . . .like his friend was still afraid of what he could at any time become again. God knew _Ken_ was . . .  
  
Squeezing his indigo-ice eyes shut at the thought, he threw the ball to the ground, kicking it violently. There was an explosive pop as his foot connected, and he almost lost his balance on the slick ground. From the sound of the ball hitting the opposite goal, like a hand on bare flesh--or, a small part of his mind whispered, like a whip smacking the same--he knew the ball had been flattened. Somehow that made him want to laugh--somehow it felt good to destroy something, to tear something apart so that even if it _had_ been alive, it wouldn't be anymore.   
  
His eyes snapped open again, the pupils contracted even in the dim and clouded noon. God . . .what was he _thinking_? What was _wrong_ with him? Shaking his head, Ken forced himself to breathe deeply, to relax. That was why he had come out here, after all . . .to vent, to relax and get that horrifying, burning hostility out of his system. Better the ball than his friends . . . That thought a hollow comfort in his mind, he started off the field, ignoring the mangled dirty mess of black and white hanging through the tear its impact had made in the goal net.   
  
And he stopped. Someone had seen that little display--a girl slightly younger than he, her small face with its wide, mournful grey eyes staring in through the chain-link fence. Shoulders slumping in a deep sigh, Ken closed his eyes again for a moment. Please, he begged silently, _please_ don't let her have seen that . . . He didn't want to have to deal with anyone right now. Of course, it was too much to hope that she wouldn't recognize him . . . Everyone seemed to recognize him. More proof that he couldn't escape himself.   
  
The girl pressed herself against the fence, fingers curling around the metal as she watched him quietly. A few strands of damp teal hair hung into her face, dark in the rain and making her eyes seem, somehow, much larger than they probably were. Firmly ignoring her, Ken picked Wormmon up--his small friend doing the 'stuffed-animal' act again, staying perfectly still, and letting himself flop a little, limply, as he was lifted. Ken grimaced, and shifted Wormmon in his arms, trying to set him into a position that might vaguely resemble comfortable for the trip home. He determined he wouldn't bring him anymore, to save his companion the trouble of trying to be inconspicuous a slightly more pressing reason than Ken's somewhat selfish want to not have him see those sickening, violent outbursts.  
  
As he started off the girl's eyes followed him, and he stopped, noting the line of her gaze at last. A little troubled, he looked down at Wormmon--but he was perfectly still, the absolute image of some sad-eyed plush toy. So, why was she staring at him . . .? Maybe she thought he was cute--he knew Miyako got that a lot, with Poromon--but it was always better safe than sorry . . . "Can I help you?" He sincerely hoped the mild tone he always spoke with didn't sound as forced as it felt just now.   
  
The girl jumped, catching her fingers in the links briefly before she pulled loose, eyes darting about desperately like she was hoping he were talking to someone else. When no one else showed themselves to be there, she swallowed, looking about to run, before pointing weakly to herself. "M-me . . .?" Her voice was tiny, frightened and whispery so that he could hardly hear her.  
  
"There's . . . no one else here." He raised one brow slightly--'it softens your face', Miyako had commented once, to which someone or another had teasingly replied 'and makes you look like a girl'. Even if his delicate, mildly feminine features were a touchy subject for him, the memory brought the crooked line of a smile to his face, and he almost laughed. It was so easy to forget why he had been avoiding them . . .  
  
The smile seemed to have done the trick, in any case--she returned it, tentatively. "Um . . .well actually-"  
  
She was suddenly cut off as an older man--grey-haired, carrying a wide black umbrella--came up behind her and grabbed her wrist. She squeaked in surprise--maybe fear--as he pulled her under the umbrella. "Yuri! What have I told you about going out in the rain!"  
  
The girl cringed, casting her eyes downward. Even from where he stood on the field, Ken could see her tremble. "I . . .I'm sorry, grampa . . .I just-"  
  
"No excuses!" He gave her arm a sharp tug, pulling her off balance and almost making her fall. "We can't have you sick, girl!" Yuri sufficiently cowed--she was clinging to him fearfully, looking for all the world like she thought she would be hit if she let go--the man looked up at Ken, furrowing beetled white brows and squinting so that his eyes all but disappeared in his wrinkled face. "Say . . .aren't you that boy genius, the one who used to be on TV all the time? Ichijouji Ken, wasn't it?"  
  
Face and voice carefully flat, Ken shifted Wormmon in his arms again, and turned his back to the old man. "Ichijouji? Never heard of him."   
  
"Huh . . .look just like him. Anyone ever tell you that?"  
  
Closing his eyes briefly, Ken took a deep breath and forced himself to walk off the field before he was too tempted to make a replacement soccer ball out of that weathered, scowling face. "Not really. Now if you don't mind, I have to get home. Studies."   
  
**~~~**  
  
"That man wasn't very polite, was he Ken-chan?"  
  
Rolling his eyes, Ken raised his arms above his head, flopping into the chair before his computer in mid-stretch. "That man," he commented dryly, "deserved a ball in the back of the head."  
  
Wormmon blinked gently, and hopped into Ken's lap, looking up at him. "The doctor? Or the girl's grandfather?"  
  
Letting his head roll back a bit, Ken popped his neck before answering. "Both." The doctor hadn't been thrilled with Ken--not only had he been late for his appointment, but he had been soaking wet, earning one of those dark disapproving glares anyone with a Ph.D. seemed so expert at flinging around. The snide comments about how a genius ought to know better didn't help either . . .Ken had wanted to take the doctor's stethoscope and--  
  
Shaking his head, he tossed up the small orange bottle he held in one hand and caught it again, peering critically at the label once more. Two pills to be taken twice daily or as needed. Right. Twice daily or whenever he had to reach out and smash something. No damn problem . . .  
  
With a sound of irritation he tossed the bottle onto the desk, watching it bounce and then roll to the floor, the tiny beige pills rattling loudly within. He looked at the place they had fallen in disgust, then leaned forward with his head in his hands. He shouldn't need those. He should be in control, like he always was. Even when things fell apart, he always had that--he always had that cold comfort that he could control himself, if nothing else. Was he doomed to lose that, too? Like everything else . . .?  
  
He reached out suddenly and flipped the computer on, the swift, sharp movement almost sending Wormmon to the floor. He had to clear his mind; stop thinking for once in his life . . .some brainless computer game ought to do the trick nicely. It seemed to work for Daisuke, anyway.  
  
"Ken-chan?" Ken looked down at his friend, at the creased little brow and the worried, watery sky-blue eyes. "Ken-chan, are you going to be alright . . .?"  
  
Not looking away from Wormmon, for a second Ken unfocused his gaze. Was he going to be alright? Once he wouldn't have wondered--a year ago, he might have thought that whatever went wrong, he could make it through with the people that called him 'friend'. Because, quite frankly, they would _make_ him get through it. They were just that type of people . . .and that was why he didn't belong with them, maybe. Because he wasn't strong like that, and never would be. Because none of them ever succumbed to that howling, twisting dark feeling that coiled in the heart like some black malignant snake. No, he wasn't strong like they were, and he could only drag them down with his troubles . . .so he avoided them.  
  
His eyes focused again as Wormmon nudged him, worried. "Ken-chan . . . please don't look so sad."  
  
With a forced, flat smile Ken rubbed the top of Wormmon's head affectionately, flicking one of his long antennae. "I'm sorry . . .I just need to clear my mind. It's been a long day . . ." It's been a long day, and I have no right to burden you anymore, friend . . .  
  
The words found no voice, though--his voice died out as he looked up at the screen, his mouth going dry. The screen was almost blank, flat black and featureless. He might have thought the monitor wasn't really even on, but for the tiny glow of four white words in the lower left corner, the flickering blink of the cursor beside them. He must have read them three times--four, five, ten--before he jolted to his feet, ignoring Wormmon's tiny startled cry when he hit the floor. Stumbling, Ken fell to his knees, and vomited into the garbage can beside the desk, clutching the plastic rim and breathing raggedly, navy hair hanging in a veil beside his face, bangs dropped limply before his hazy eyes. It didn't register when he started to cry, or when Wormmon crawled tentatively up beside him, looking up at him sadly without knowing what to do--he was still staring at them, those words burned into the back of his lids when he closed his eyes.  
  
The words glowed innocently on the computer screen, soft-edged white against the black and completely untouched. The message seemed almost random, childlike in its simplicity: Come home, Kenny boy.  


**  
~~~**  


  
Daisuke was bouncing his soccer ball from knee to knee in the living room when the phone went off. He waited for a few rings, figuring either his mom or Jun would get it.  
  
"Daisuke! Get the phone! And stop playing with that thing in the house!"   
  
With a weary, exasperated groan, he let the ball fall and roll under the coffee table. "Aw . . .Do I _have_ to?"  
  
"Dai!"  
  
"Man . . ." He rubbed the back of his neck, wrinkling his nose. "I gotta do everything around here . . ." Snatching the phone up, he leaned it against his shoulder, boredly fiddling with the cord. "Motamiya resid-oh!" He perked up at the familiar voice, straightening out of his slouch and picking the phone up in his hand. "What's up, Wormmon?" Hearing his friend's name, Chibimon popped his head up from the sofa cushion he had been dozing behind.   
  
"Dai, who is it?" His mother poked her head out of the kitchen for a moment, looking at him with both brows raised in that whole 'I can't believe my son can't answer the phone right' look she got with him.  
  
"Uh . . ." blinking, he held the receiver away from him, looking at it like he'd never seen it before. "Just a friend of mine, mom . . ."  
  
"Don't be on too long."  
  
"Uh-huh . . ." He put the receiver to his face again, huddling into the phone. "What do you mean, something's wrong with Ken?" A nasty, sinking feeling settled in his stomach. "Whoa . . .slow down. Is he hurt or sick or kidnapped by aliens or what?" Again, he blinked; dark brown eyes assuming their characteristic look of being completely and utterly lost. "Huh? Come over?" He turned his head, looking out the window to the dark, rainy evening. "I don't think mom'll let me . . ." Daisuke scratched his head, then wiped his fingers absently on his shorts. Note to self--use less hair gel.   
  
Chibimon bounced on the cushion, hopping up onto the back of the sofa. "What's going on, Daisuke?" He blinked his huge, shiny reddish eyes, head tilted inquisitively. "Is Ken okay?"  
  
Putting a finger to his lips to hush his pal, Dai grinned. "Hey, chill. You know I wouldn't abandon my buddy. We'll be over. Yuh-huh. Catch ya in a bit." He hung the phone up, putting his hands behind his head and rocking back on the heels of his sneakers with an exaggerated sigh as he looked over to the front door. There was no way his mom would let him out at this hour, in this weather, so . . .  
  
"_Daisuke_ . . ." the little blue digimon whined as he continued bouncing up and down, up and down on the sofa.  
  
"Hold on a sec, I'm thinking . . ." Brow furrowing in concentration, Dai rocked forward, then back again. This was definitely a problem. "Uh . . ."  
  
"What's going on? Is Ken okay? Is Wormmon okay?" More bouncing. "Tellmetellmetellmetellmeeeeeeeee~!"  
  
He was going to get busted if he left. His mom would kill him, or at least ground him for about a year. He'd end up stuck at home with . . .with _Jun_, and he'd probably end up having to do her chores as punishment, too. _But_ . . .  
  
Putting a finger to his lips in a hushing motion, Dai picked Chibimon up, tucking him under his arm. The little digimon squeaked, but was otherwise silent, as Daisuke bolted to the door, and flung it open. "Emergency! I'll be back, Mom!" he yelled the words out as the door slammed shut behind him, and tore down the apartment hallway headed out before she probably even registered he was gone.  
  
Grinning happily, Daisuke laughed right along with the giggling digimon in his arms. He was going to get busted, yes . . .but hey, this was his best friend, this was _Ken_ . . .he was more than worth the trouble.  


  
**~~~**  


  
Black eyes closed blearily, and Koushiro sighed as he stood up from his computer desk, stretching with a creak of stiff tendons. Maybe Taichi was right, he thought with a slight flinch as a muscle cramped up in protest--he _should_ get off his butt and move more often.   
  
Opening his eyes again, Koushiro looked down at the clock on his computer. Eleven? He blinked. Already? "Wow . . ." Shaking his head, he leaned down, putting his hand on the mouse. "I need to get to sleep." He started to hit shutdown . . .but stopped, blinking again.  
  
"What the . . .?" Almost unconsciously sitting back in his chair, Koushiro leaned forward until his nose almost touched the screen, squinting. "Huh . . ." he mumbled, "Where did _you_ come from . . .?" Curious, he moved the cursor over the strange, new icon: strange not only because of it's shape--Koushiro couldn't help but have the Batman theme pop into his head; it looked like the bat signal, for goodness sake-- but also because . . .well, quite frankly, because it was _new_. He had looked away from the screen for all of ten seconds, and it was just . . .there, small and grey and totally unmarked in the lower left corner, almost painfully familiar.  
  
Mumbling slightly, he started to click the icon--and stopped, as a small red light started flashing on the screen, bright and urgent. The strange icon was filed away for later as a small program window automatically opened, scrolling a warning he had hoped never to have to see again.  
  
"Crap," he muttered, closing the window and calling up his e-mail program. "An emergency in the Digital World? What the heck could it be . . .?" Now fully awake, he started typing--whatever it was, he had to tell the others. It wasn't that he was _worried_ -- they had already been through so much, and overcome such insane odds, that not much probably would have phased any of them anymore--but an emergency was an _emergency_, and it had to get taken care of . . .  
  
"Damnit!" Koushiro slammed a hand down on the desk as the cursor locked into place, and the warning light froze bright red. That was it--this stupid computer kept freezing; he was just going to get a new one, instead of continually upgrading the old piece of junk. "Stupid, _stupid_ machine . . ." He thwacked the casing with his palm, then shook his head with an irate sigh. "Oh. . .no point in getting mad at it. . ." Control, alt, delete. . .the computer reset, and he flicked the power switch; strange icon totally forgotten. "I'll just have to call the guys in the morning." Shaking his head again, Koushiro hit the lights, and went to bed.   
  
The room was silent save for his breathing and mumblings for hours, long after he had fallen asleep. In the still darkness, a faint humming was heard, and a small light sprang on--the computer coming to slow electric life, the screen running black, then white. Across the glass scrolled numbers--ones and zeroes, rapidfire sequence speeding downward so quickly they were only a blur. Then . ..stopped. The numbers simply stopped, replaced by words--by _word-- _over and over and over again.  
  
The screen suddenly blew out, a screaming explosion that showered shattered glass across the desk and floor. Koushiro snapped awake from his fitful dreams. "What the--" he stopped. Stared. Fumbled for the cellphone beside his bed, punched in a number from memory. "Taichi? Yes, I _know_ what time it is. Yeah. . . sorry for waking you--Taichi!!" He swallowed, looked down at the glass. He couldn't explain why it scared him _so much_, no matter how bizzare it was. So illogical. . .but. . . "I think we have a problem."  
  
The shards of glass on the floor were still lit as though nothing had happened, as though they were still part of a functioning screen. And each one of them read in stark black against the word-processor white a single word, cold and with a judgemental finality:  
  
_Mine_.   



	2. Seeing Shadows

**DISCLAIMER:** I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Author's Note: **I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. ^^;;;**   
**This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the realease of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this. =P  
_________________________________________________________  
**  
2  
Seeing Shadows**  


  
It was chasing him.  
  
The boy didn't know what it was ripping after him but he knew it was chasing him, and he could hear it laughing behind him. He didn't turn around, he didn't pause when he tripped and stumbled and his ankle twisted inside the boot, he didn't reach up to push the wind-snapped clots of tangled purple-blue hair from his eyes. Something in his blood was screaming at him through the adrenaline; screaming one word in cadence with his heartbeat and he was inclined to listen: run. Run run run run run. So he ran, and it chased him.  
  
It was catching up. The black was spreading--the brown death of plant and the sudden choked silence of birdsong, the shadows getting longer and creased with the ugly oily purple of the thing chasing him. He choked for a moment but he didn't say anything, he had to save his breath and run run run; had to save his breath and get away from the blue-eyed shadow chasing him. But oh shit his eyes were starting to water from the wind and the branches snapping him in the eye, and he could feel it breathing on his neck. Oh shit, he was a stranger in a strange land and he didn't know how he'd gotten there and he didn't know how to get _out_ either, which mattered a hell of a lot more right now. Oh shit.  
  
Something grabbed him around the neck like long cold clawed fingers, and the shadow pulled him back until he was covered in it--wrapped in it, trapped in it. The purple-black fingers forced his jaws apart and he heard the thing snarl at him-- "Give it to me! Give it to me or I will _take it!" _The blue eyes were wide, and murderous--shot and hungry and so pale; the eyes of an eater, of a vengeful lost soul.   
  
The boy made a strangled sound, wound his fingers in the choking oily shadow and tried to breathe. "Na. . .namoor _anum_!!" Blood choked out with the last word, flecking his lips-- his body jerked as though struck.  
  
The shadow howled, pulled away enough that the boy could gasp a breath and fall to his knees but then it was there again; the fingers wrapping around his throat and scrabbling to cut, to make him bleed. It was laughing again--it forced him down into the ground. The boy's eyes unfocused slightly--damnit he was going to pass out, and man oh man what would his uncle and his aunties think about_ that_ huh, four hours running in a strange land and then passing out on the ground under some greasy soul-hungry shadow.  
  
He felt something crack under the assault, something important--it wasn't a bone or anything, nothing so basic and replaceably unessential--and his fingers dug the dirt beneath him as he tried to get up, to get up and run again. But the shadow had the crack now, and it was starting--oh shit his aunties were gonna _kill _him for this--it was starting to go solid. From the dirt his face was pressed into he could see strange and huge dark boots, part of a cape on the ground all fuzzy like computer pixels at the edges. The crack was getting wider.  
  
"W. . .wait. . .!" He had meant to yell but it came out hoarse and choked--yes, he was feeling those big hands now. Or. . .no, wait. That was _one_ fucking _huge_ hand, and it had hitched up a bit, but was now loosening just enough that he could breathe and speak. "Wait. I know what you want. I. . . I can get you more, just. . ."  
  
The hand slipped away and the boy fell forward into the ground again. His nose gushed blood at its impact but he ignored it, breathing the dust and the blood that was quickly making the ground soupy in that one tiny spot right there. That hand grasped the back of his shirt then, and pulled him roughly up, held him dangling above the ground--he found himself looking into those eyes, cruel blue eyes in the oily purpleblackred shadow and they were smiling with the narrow, angular face that was almost visible within. "Really. . ."  
  
The crack was closing up now, but the boy had a feeling--a very nasty, very sinking black feeling in the pit of his stomach--that his aunties were going to kill him anyway.  
  


**~~~~~~  
  
**

"Dude, Ken. . .talk to me."  
  
For the hundred thousandth time so far, Ken did _not_ talk to him though--only sat with his eyes closed and head down, pale face drawn and tearstreaked where Daisuke could see it through the hair hanging in his friend's face. His hands were folded in his lap, gripping each other until the knuckles looked white and strained--they hadn't moved, and really neither had Ken. Not since Dai had hauled him out of his house and dragged him on the bus that morning, thinking it might be better to get him out of the hot puke-smelling room. And away from the softly humming computer that had been, for some weird reason, creeping the hell out of Daisuke.   
  
"Ken. Earth to Ken." He waved a hand in Ken's face, poking him in the ribs lightly--the really annoying tickly way that always made Ken wrinkle his nose like a little kid and say 'stop it, Dais'. "Earth to Ichijouji, this is your best friend speaking. . .hellooooooo. . ."  
  
He frowned slightly as Ken once more failed to respond, looking over briefly to make sure Chibimon hadn't totally traumatized Wormmon in the process of comforting him--he hadn't-- and then back to Ken. "Ken. . .I want to help. But you're not giving me a lot to work with here. . ." He paused, head cocked. "You could at least let me know you're alive in there, buddy. . .come on."  
  
Ken didn't move, but the fact was that of course he _was_ alive, and perfectly aware of Dai's chatter and prodding. But he didn't want to speak, because then he would have to open his eyes. Look up, and open his eyes. . .and see the boy sitting across from them. It shouldn't have bothered him. Really. It was just a boy of eleven to thirteen, tall and not quite scrawny, pale face (and it seemed so much paler with that dark unkempt hair) adorned with slightly crooked glasses and a charming, equally crooked smile. No, it shouldn't have bothered him one bit--he should have been happy to meet the eyes behind the perpetually smudged lenses, or return the good-natured grin. Instead he felt sick to his stomach every time he thought about it, every time his mind called up the face he had seen directly across from him when Daisuke had guided him to a seat.  
  
The bus lurched to a stop, and Ken's system seemed to lurch with it--a hundred thousand miles away he felt Dai put a steadying hand on his arm, yell up to the busdriver to learn to fucking _drive_. Across from him, so much nearer, he heard the boy shift, stand--he was wearing scruffy sneakers with the laces not quite tied, the back bit of cuff on the faded jeans dragging the ground under the soles; and Ken didn't know how he knew except that it was sick certainty. The sound came, too, of him twitching his short-sleeved green sweater into place over the blue shirt beneath. "You take care now, Kiddo. . .and watch when you cross the streets, hear?" The voice was gentle and laughing. . .a friendly harmless tease.  
  
He was gone then, and the bus started up again, but the bile remained in Ken's throat. The burning acid behind his eyes remained so he kept them shut and he clasped his hands tighter together until the knuckles almost split and bled, and wished he had brought those damned, those fucking accursed pills.  
  
  



	3. Not Crazy

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Author's Note**: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. ^^;;; (And yes Shouji, I -will- bring in the other charas soon, you impatient bastard. P)   
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the realease of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**3  
Not Crazy**  


  
"So wait. One more time. . ." Taichi sat, head tilted, face faintly screwed as he considered what he had just been told. "You're telling me. . .that your computer exploded, and it. . .what, was talking to you?"  
  
Shaking his head, Koushiro set his tea down--with trembling hands he had been spilling more than he was drinking, anyway. "Just the screen. And it wasn't talking, Taichi. . .the screen. The pieces. . .they had. . .words. . ." He trailed off somewhat lamely, looking over with absolute bafflement to the computer. "I. . .I know it sounds crazy, Taichi, but--"  
  
"But maybe you were dreaming, Kou." With a shrug, Tai leaned back in the computer chair, pointing to the screen--off, and in one piece, perfectly inanimate and completely unthreatening. "I mean. . .it doesn't look like the _anything_ exploded here."  
  
"I wasn't dreaming!" At Tai's doubtful look, he shook his head, shoved himself up from his seat at the edge of his bed. "Tai, don't look at me like that. . .I wasn't dreaming--"  
  
"Then maybe all that computer radiation is going to your head. . .?"  
  
Tai had been laughing slightly when he spoke--it hadn't been meant seriously, just a little joke; an attempt to lighten the gloomy mood. Koushiro, however, exploded. "I'm not going crazy! I _heard_ it explode, I _saw_ what it said, and the pieces were still here not even an hour ago! Mine! It said _Mine_ Tai and it scared me shitless and stop looking at me like that because _I know I what I goddamn saw and I wasn't hallucinating_!" It had been shouted out in almost one breath, and now he subsided slightly; one hand to his head as he shakily reached for his tea with the other. "I. . .I swear. . .it was still here when I went. . .when I went to get the door. . " He swallowed hard, rubbing at his forehead as if to wipe the memory away.   
  
Blinking a few times, Taichi raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, standing and putting his hands on Koushiro's trembling shoulders. "Hey. . .hey, Koushiro. Calm down. . .it's okay. It's going to be okay. . ."  
  
For a moment Koushiro simply stood there shaking, breathing heavily and with his hand rubbing roughly at his forehead, before he shook his head, and moved his hand down to cover his eyes--there was a red mark where it had been rubbing. "Y. . .yeah." He sounded beaten, weary. "Yeah, it'll all be okay. Probably just not enough sleep." With a long sigh he shook his head; set his tea down and absently wiped the cooling liquid off of his hand on the hem of his shirt. "Maybe you should just go home."  
  
"Are you sure, Kou? Because if you need some company--"  
  
"No. I think. . ." Beneath his fingers Koushiro's eyes darted to the side, a hunted edgy look to the computer's blank black monitor. "I think I may try to get some sleep."  
  
Tai looked at him doubtfully for a moment, then nodded slowly, taking one hand from Kou's shoulder. "Well okay. . ." He paused, then pat Kou's shoulder companionably before removing his other hand as well. "Okay. I know you've got my number if you need anything. Just sleep and take it easy."  
  
"Yeah. No worries, Tai."   
  
They both stood there a moment, an uneasy mutual understanding that it _wasn't_ all okay, that there _were_ worries and plenty of them, and then Tai grinned and socked Kou in the arm lightly. "Ah. . .you'll be fine. See you later." He left with a wave, shutting the door carelessly behind him and calling a farewell to Koushiro's drowsy parents.  
  
Koushiro stood swaying on his feet for a few minutes in the wake of Tai's departure, then dropped back down onto his bed wearily, falling back onto the blankets and laying an arm across his face. He was not dreaming. He was not crazy. He was not dreaming. He was not crazy. He was not--  
  
Ten minutes into the mantra he was interrupted by the low hum of the computer, by the sharp and violent explosion, the shattering of glass. Somehow he was certain of the words without looking  
  
(_haha 'Shiro-chan. . .gotcha didn't I?)  
  
_and he wasn't sure whether he should laugh or cry. So he brushed the glass away and wiped the blood away. . .and continued.  
  
He was not dreaming he was not crazy he was not dreaming he was not. . .  
  


**~~~~~**  
  


It was dark. More accurately it was Dark, and in the Dark Ken could see nothing, feel nothing; there was a soft dull sound, a strange staccato ticking and by that alone did he know he had any of his senses left. His head jerked blindly, eyes wide and the whites huge, pupils consuming color in fear until the pale lavender-azure of his eyes were bare eclipsed rings between black and white in his face as he sought the source of the noise. There was something familiar about it; he didn't know why it should frighten him but it did, and there was something agonizingly familiar about it. Something, something. . .  
  
The sound stopped--faded really, drew into itself with a faint hissing sound as a thousand drowsy serpents, or a single great one; huge as the world, huge as the heavens.   
  
_Ken. . ._  
  
It was close--it hissed into his ear with a voice that curled and coiled, close static and distant waves that screamed through his system and dragged icefire through his spine. Ken's throat hitched around a scream and a trembling groan as something touched him--a brief feather-light touch across his cheek that froze the skin so harsh it blistered where it passed, dug down to burn and bury itself in his skull.  
  
_My dear Ken. . .my precious Kenny. . ._  
  
Again Ken felt his entire system, his entire world and being lurch violently. There were spots. . .no, slashes, bright slashes of dim dark metallic in the Darkness before him; shifting filmy slow iridescence. He couldn't look at them. Daren't. . .daren't look at them so he closed his eyes like a child thinking the monster would go away if he couldn't see it. His mouth moved to form words, but nothing came out--only that hoarse, whimpering moan.   
  
_You don't remember me. . . _ it sounded almost hurt. . .almost amused. _Such a pity Ken. . .dear, dear little Ken. Won't you come home?_  
  
It burned inside his lids, the afterimage. . .slashes bright slashes, and a memory as of a nightmare. Someone small, someone pale and afraid crying out against a dark world, and the waves. . . "W. . .w. . .who. . .?" His voice was still a dull sound of fear and pain; he could feel his breath freeze against his skin. Something familiar but he didn't want to come back here, where that old black feeling started to rise up and choked in his closed throat. . .  
  
_Liar. . . _the voice purred the word into his ear, poured it against his skin like molten ice. _Such a good liar Ken, except here. . .except to me. I do so miss you, little Ken. . . won't you come back to me? Won't you let me comfort you again, as only I could ever do. . .?  
_  
So cold. . .so cold he was shaking, couldn't stop shaking. The voice laughed softly, the mockery gone for a moment so that it sounded. . .it sounded soft, caring, comforting. It knew him, and he knew it, and everything would be okay. The ageless ancient voice like static and the sea would make everything all right if he only closed his eyes and believed it so. . .  
  
_Yes. . . trust me Ken. . ._  
  
But of course Ken trusted that smooth sibilant voice. Of course, yes, of course. . .He felt himself starting to drift, and ignored the part of him that started screaming when something sharp and cold like polished ice tore open his wrist into his palm, when his blood beaded and froze into sharp crystals across his skin. It wasn't so bad, his skin splitting and freezing and breaking to shards. It wasn't so bad if he let himself drift, ignored the little child inside him screaming and the shaking. . . the agony of screaming, and the cold, desperate shaking.  



	4. The Call

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Author's Note**: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. ^^;;; (And yes Shouji, I -will- bring in the other charas soon, you impatient bastard. P)   
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the disappearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**4  
The Call**  
  


The day promised rain.  
  
The clouds piled high, black bellies hung low in the air and charging it with the sharply metallic taste of storm and ozone; the wind blew cold between the high stenciled outlines of the apartment buildings. Here and there a few early sprays of dampness dropped from the sky for a moment or two, forerunners of what was yet to come. The day promised rain, as every other day that week had; and as every other day that week had it seemed bent on delivering. Leaning on the balcony railing still wet from the previous evening, wind tearing her hair into her face, Hikari couldn't help but feel there was another promise as well.  
  
Taking her hands from the soaked rail she held them skyward, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. It almost felt like flying, except for the cold sharp line dug into her midriff by the railing. It almost felt like flying, and somewhere out there was the thing she was trying to find in all this wind and water and cloudy-morning darkness--a part of her wanted to jump that stupid railing and reach far enough to find it, just beyond her outstretched fingertips. Once she had held it in her hands. . .once upon a time she had known what it was that pulled at the corners of her heart and mind.   
  
_But I was sick then. _Her own gentle reminder seemed almost sad, almost bitter, and she opened her eyes a little, open hands curling closed just a bit. True. . .she had been sick then, and if she had kept it she couldn't be out here in the rain right now. It had almost killed her to keep that strange elusive _something_, and no matter how sick she had been or how sick she might become, times like these she wondered if it had been worth it to lose.   
  
"Hikari. . .?" Tailmon had wandered out onto the balcony, flicking her paws a little with each step like any cat does when walking somewhere wet. She hopped up onto the rail, balancing easily, and looking up to her partner with one ear faintly forward.   
  
"Shhh. . .Tailmon, can't you hear it?" Her eyes were closed again, hands again held wide as she leaned farther and farther over the rail. "So close. . ."  
  
Blinking a little, Tailmon reached out, pulling Hikari back just a little by the back of her shirt. "Hear what?" She wrinkled her nose a bit, tail twitching. "All I hear is the wind. Come back inside Kari. . .your mother's going to have a fit if she sees you out here."  
  
Hikari shook her head, pulling away from Tailmon. "The calling, Tailmon. . .can't you hear the calling?" She faltered slightly, hesitating. "I can't quite. . .I only know something's wrong. . .Very. . .very. . ." Her voice trailed off--a vague and contemplative silence. That was what it was. . .a call. Someone, something familiar calling out to her, crying out please help me please. . .  
  
"Hikari!" Tailmon tugged at the back of Kari's shirt again, pulling her back sharply as she started to climb over the railing. "Hikari, what's gotten into you?" She tugged on the shirt until Hikari looked back at her, looking up into the girl's face concernedly. "Hikari. . ."  
  
Looking into her partner's worried blue eyes, Hikari's mind started to slide, to slip away on the strange desperate calling. Her vision blurred--Tailmon became a smudge of white against a grey-black world, a single pure streak of light in the darkness. Like viewing the world through a rain-smudged window she watched that pale line, watched something dark and bleakly prismatic beyond it slide and coil. Someone was laughing and she knew the sound--cruel and disdainful, human but horrible. . .beautiful and hideous all at once. They were laughing, but oh God couldn't they see that horrible something behind them--it shifted and then there were slashes of dull metal in this running world, sharp and cold and shifting, they burned her and she wanted to scream and they called her--  
  
With a gasp Hikari jerked from the vision and the world snapped back into place like a steel trap--her hands fell and gripped the railing hard as she fought for her breath. "T-Tailmon. . ." She could hear terror in her trembling voice, and she wondered if she would ever forget those dark-bright slits of color like so many prismed mad eyes.   
  
Putting a paw over Hikari's hand, Tailmon looked up at her, fear now mixing with worry on her face. "I'm here, Hikari. . .don't worry, I'm here. . ."  
  
Swallowing hard, she shook her head, and pushed away from the railing. "No. We have to go." Chewing her lip, she shook her head again. "Now. Right now. . ." Still muttering to herself she swept into her room and grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair, tugging it on even as she put her shoes on and left the house with a very puzzled, very worried Tailmon in her wake.  
  
The rain had begun to fall--in the dim near-darkness, it sounded like strange laughter on the ground.  
  


**~~~~~  
  
**

The boy sat with his legs drawn up, chin resting on his knees and bangs hanging before the narrow eyes, almost the same shade of purple-blue. It was easy, right now, to be kicking himself over his stupidity. He should have known where he was--obviously the Overworld, but somehow not the Lynklanes, which made _no_ sense at all--and so he should have known how to get back. Of course, now he _couldn't_ go back, courtesy of that nasty, greasy shadow that had taken up residence in some unused corner of his being. Auntie Elli would have been frothing. Uncle Kai would have just shot him, maybe somewhere vital.  
  
"Get up, boy." The voice of the shadow came from inside him this time, greasy as the shade as been and slicking up out of the depths. Man, but he wanted some kind of psyche-shower right now. With antibacterial soap, even the kind that smelled all fruity if that was what it took.  
  
After a moment he got up, jamming his hands into his pockets and slouching a bit, firmly refusing to do anything above and beyond what he had been asked. He let a Magispark trail down his line of thoughts too for good measure. . .just to be sure that the shadow knew he was working under heavy protest.  
  
The Spark was returned with crippling force, and with a dull curse he fell to his knees, clutching his head. "A. . .ah! Ow! Okay okay. . ." he shook his head, trying to block the burning from his mind, and the mocking laughter of the shadow. "I'll behave. . . What now?"  
  
"Get moving. We're about to begin."  
  
He cringed a bit, shoving himself with a slight unsteadiness to his feet. "We. . .we are?" Swallowing hard, he hung his head. "I. . .I can't just. . .go find people to--"  
  
"No," The voice seemed rather disgusted, as though speaking to an idiot subordinate. "You can't. Not properly, which is why they're being delivered. Now _move_ before I _make _you!" The words snapped across the boy's mind with a sharp arc of crimson like a whip of bloody lightning, and again he cried out, clutching his head.  
  
"I'm going!!" He gasped faintly, stumbling forward, before getting his balance again. There was a faint burning behind his eyes, but it wasn't tears. He never cried. It was just that he wanted so badly to be home right now, no matter how bad it was or what they would do to him. . .  
  
Rubbing at his itching eyes with one sleeve he ignored the mockery of the shadow's voice and started to walk wherever it wanted him, and wondered what poor sucker of a soul it would take him to meet.  
  


**~~~~~**  
  


"KEN!!!!" A hand smacked across his face--not a cold touch, but clammy and nervous-hot and trembling. The Dark flickered, and then there was light behind his closed lids. He wasn't standing. . .he was on the ground, wet and slick pavement beneath him. It seemed warm, but that part of him which never quite lost control completely  
  
(_screaming screaming god oh god not--_)  
  
reminded him almost drily that it wasn't, and if he didn't get off the ground he was more like than not to get sick, considering his recent stint on the rainy soccer field.  
  
He started shaking again. . .or no, that was someone shaking him roughly, almost violently.  
  
"Ken, wake the hell up! Come on. . ." The clammy hands slipped on Ken's shirt, almost dropped him. "Stupid goddamn sonofa--"  
  
Ken coughed slightly, pushed at the hands as he opened his eyes to thin slits. The dim light filtering from the clouded sky was blinding, made his eyes water. For some reason his cheek hurt and he couldn't quite remember why anyone would be shaking him, or why he would be on the ground. His head hurt, his wrist hurt, his throat felt like he had been screaming. . . "Dais. . ." the word was a faint croak, choking as he tried to straighten up.  
  
"Ken!" Dai's hands _did_ slip in surprise, and Ken flinched as he thudded back onto the pavement. It was only for a moment though because then Dai had lifted him up, was hugging him and shaking him. "Ken! What happened? I got you off the bus and your eyes just went all distant and rolled back in your head and you fell and you wouldn't wake the hell up no matter how much I shook you and then your face--"  
  
He was babbling, and for some odd reason that irritated Ken. Almost detachedly he realized that he really, really wanted Dai to let go and shut up; and that yes, he would have been perfectly happy to throttle his dear friend to achieve that particular end. That curious lump in his throat was loosening now--it seemed to be dispersing into his system, and the more it did the more appealing that particular thought appeared. . .  
  
With a faint choking sound he jerked violently in Dai's grasp--away from Dai, and didn't even notice when he slipped from Dai's hands and his head slammed back into the pavement except that Dai wasn't touching him anymore and oh god he had to get away before he did something terrible. . .before the black snake curled up out of it's den and made him do something he might have wanted to do anyway. He didn't hear Dai as he scrambled away on the pavement scraping his hands, didn't see Dai except through some kinda of cynical, hateful nightshade haze across his eyes. Dai was standing, reaching out; and his mouth was moving but Ken couldn't hear him, couldn't hear anything but that horrible slithering voice in his head and all around.  
  
_What's the matter Kenny. . .dearest darling little Ken. . .? _  
  
"S. . .stop it. . ." The words gasped out, choked out. He felt like a child again, so afraid and so cold. . .   
  
_That's the problem with pills, Kenny. . .they're only good when you remember, aren't they?_  
  
"Go away. . ." The look on Daisuke's face said he thought Ken was telling him to go away, gasping at him in desperate terrified rage to get the fucking hell away; and he was so confused and he didn't know why. He looked hurt, and worried. He looked  
  
(_like and idiot_)  
  
in all reality as lost as Ken felt, and for some reason that made him angry again. Or more angry. Oh god what was wrong with him?  
  
_Nothing Kenny. . .nothing's wrong. You're perfect Kenny. . .absolutely perfect and don't you ever forget that. . ._  
  
It was almost distantly that he realized he was backing away still, as Dai came towards him with that puzzled worried look on his face and his mouth moving silently; and almost distantly that he realized that if Dai touched him he would strike out at him. The idea seemed perfectly agreeable now, watching Dai through that oddly familiar nightshade haze. . .that he would strike out and wrap his hands around Dai's neck and twist until the skin broke and the bone snapped and--  
  
And it wasn't only Daisuke in front of him anymore. There was someone behind Dai as well--unruly dark hair and pale skin; smudged crooked glasses and an easy crooked smile. The boy from the bus, except that now he had a name and Ken oddly wasn't afraid of him this time. Didn't hate him so much, this time, and he didn't look so frightening this time in his faded jeans and his two shirts, the green practically falling off of one narrow shoulder still clad in navy blue. He shook his head a bit, putting a hand on his hip in an amused sort of exasperation as Ken stared at him.   
  
"Sometimes I don't know what to do with you, Kenny boy. . ." He laughed a little, and held out his hand from behind Daisuke. "Come on. . .let's fix this and go home, okay? I'll make some bubble-gunk. . ."  
  
Ken blinked, his head reeled. He was reaching out but that wasn't quite right--no, _now_ something wasn't quite right, because why _shouldn't_ he be reaching out? Why shouldn't he want to go home. . .? His hand wavered, and he almost pulled it back.  
  
The boy from the bus frowned slightly. "Ken? Hey, you look sick. Better have Mom call the doctor for you. . . Come on." With the hand that wasn't held out to Ken, he pushed his glasses back up on his nose. "You shouldn't be out in the rain anyway."  
  
Rain? Was it raining. . .? Ken tilted his head up and blinked dully--the water fell on his face like tiny dull needles of ice and yes, it was raining. Daisuke was shaking him again, was calling his name and was _touching_ him again, and the rain was falling on his face and felt like fire against his cheek for some unfathomable reason; and all he wanted to do right now was go home and curl up and go to sleep in the dark, in the Dark.   
  
The boy from the bus smiled again, and Ken didn't understand why he couldn't remember his name, or why that faint dizzy metal reflection in his eyes seemed so out of place. "Then come on home, Kenny boy." He laughed softly, and shrugged, stretching his hand out just a little more to Ken. "We're waiting for you."  
  
Waiting. . .looking into the familiar eyes with the strange hint of   
  
(_slashes bright slashes  
shifting filmy iridescence)  
  
_dark and bright metallic reflection just over the surface, it didn't really matter what his name was. It was the voice he knew, and the crooked smile; and that goddamn stupid nickname 'Kenny boy.' He smiled vaguely--god but his cheek burned--and pulled his hand from Dai's grasp, and he reached out. . .  
  
He didn't see the blood streaking down from the boy's raggedly cut forehead, didn't note the broken lenses of the glasses or the torn and tire-tracked state of the boy's clothing until their fingers touched. . .but even then it didn't matter so much that the hand that took his own was broken and dead, that eyes were glassy and dead, that he had taken his brother's hand in the rain and his brother was still so, so dead.  
  
Because by then Ken was gone, and all Dai was holding was the cold, rainy air.  



	5. Nothin' Yet

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu (aka mystery boy) is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on FF.net under the penname Osidiano.  
**Author's Note**: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. ^^;;; But I'm getting there, no worries.   
For those that wonder "the hell?" about Miyako's hair color here, I had a friend with hair that color and belive me, it _looks_ lavender. ^^;; So yeah. I think it's _pretty, _damnit. P  
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the realease of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**5  
Nothin' Yet  
  
**

The pieces lay on the floor all around her--chips and casings, wire and drivers on the carpet like science fiction jigsaw pieces amongst the tools. They were a curious contrast to the room with its stuffed animals and boy-band posters, the photos of friends tacked up beside the bed scrapbook-style--very standard teenage girl's room fare all in all--but so on occasion was Miyako, and in the end she supposed it all balanced out.  
  
Pushing some of her hair back over her shoulder--it was a curious color, a soft pale grey-brown that looked more lavender or purple than anything else in all but the harshest light (where it looked like she was greying)--and she _had_ tied it back with her blue bandanna but that had been several hours ago and it was starting to come loose. Bits and strands had straggled forward in the most inconvenient places, catching on her glasses and some sticking to her face by some irritant miracle of static, sweat, and Murphy's Law. For the past twenty minutes or so ignoring it had become increasingly difficult. . .possibly because she was becoming increasingly nervous, and increasingly irritable.  
  
_There are still a couple wires you haven't tried, Miya-chan.  
  
_She scowled at the screen--she was holding the monitor on her lap, totally disconnected from any and all other parts of her dismembered computer. "I don't think that's the problem."  
  
The white monitor cleared, new words appearing across the screen as if being typed in that elegant, scrawling script. It had stopped being typeface a while ago, and she wasn't quite sure when. _But you don't think you're crazy.  
  
_"I did." She _felt_ crazy. She was sitting on the floor with her computer taken to pieces and talking to a monitor that should be blank but instead seemed to be talking back. She looked over at her bed, at the little pink ball of feathers that stared at her and the screen with wide confused eyes. "But Poromon sees it too, and I don't think we're _both_ crazy." She paused, and brushed at the hair clinging to her face. "I could be dreaming."  
  
_But you don't think you're dreaming.  
  
_"Not really." Actually, that _had_ been herfirst thought right after crazy, but she had disregarded it a while ago when she cut herself in the midst of dismantling the computer with trembling hands. She didn't usually bleed in her dreams, and anyway she'd never had a dream like this. Even her strangest nightmare had never seemed quite so. . .surreal._  
  
You ain't seen _nothin'_ yet, sweetheart.  
  
_Blinking a bit at the curious words and the sudden slang, it took a moment for Miyako to open her mouth to ask what the _heck_ that was supposed to mean. The doorbell rang before she got the words out, and she looked up. "Somebody get that?"  
  
There was no answer, and the doorbell rang again--three times rapidly in a row, strangely urgent. Miyako sighed and set the monitor down on the carpet, standing and brushing at her hair again; pushing her glasses back into place as she went for the door. "Hold on!" It continued to ring at a panicky pace until she opened the door. She blinked. "Hi. . .Hikari?"  
  
It_ was_ Hikari, but Hikari looked strung out and sleepless. It was Hikari, and she was supporting Daisuke, and he looked glassy-eyed with shock, white as a ghost and about to drop to the ground and scream or maybe just cry. Three digimon huddled about their feet and one of them _was_ crying--Wormmon was sobbing uncontrollably, Tailmon looking puzzled and scared as she tried to comfort Chibimon comforting the little insect. It was like opening the door and realizing you were on the set of a horror movie; one where your best friends have just become the victims and you found yourself feeling they had brought the beast in coming to you. Miyako blinked again, not knowing what to say and almost too numb to gesture them in. Let them in. . .closed the door behind them and closed the beast in.  
  
It was already there anyway--it left its mark on the inside of her eyes in bright ink, the strange and serpentine script. _Lovely. Let's roll, Miya.  
  
_

**~~~~~~  
  
**

_"_Aw _man_. . .you gotta be _kidding _me." The boy stood there rubbing the back of his neck, and feeling rather awkward as he looked down at the figure sprawled on the ground before him. They were pale and fragile in that soaking, oversized grey sweater; dark hair fanned listlessly across one burned and blistered cheek. They looked. . .helpless, frightened. The boy swallowed, and shook his head. "_Gotta_ be kidding me. She's just a kid. . ."  
  
"Yes, I'm sure 'she' is." The voice was dry, impatient and highly unamused.  
  
"Well. . .so. . ." The boy jammed his hands back into his pockets, blinking a bit. "So you want me to just. . ." Man. Man oh man oh man. He didn't wanna have to do that, not just to some poor little girl who looked all beat up and scared to shit anyway. I mean, sure she was unconscious _now_ but maybe she'd wake up when it started hurting and--  
  
The figure on the ground stirred slightly--the thin, cracked lips moving briefly in a some kind of choked sigh, and the eyelids fluttering slightly. And be damned if he was just gonna let this poor kid wake up to a cold leaden sky as the last thing she ever saw--nope, he was raised different than that even if only by himself, and so the boy dropped down to a crouch next to her, tentatively reaching a hand out to sit her upright.   
  
"Hey. . .hey girl, you okay. . .?" He blinked, and turned a little red as she opened her eyes--strange eyes, dark and light indigo-azure-lavender beneath the blue-black bangs--and be just as damned if that wasn't really a _boy._ Man, did he hope the guy hadn't heard him call him a _girl_. . . "Hey man. . .talk to me. How many fingers?" He held his hand up with two fingers lifted, waving them in front of the boy's face.  
  
The distant look in his eyes wavered for a moment, and then one pale hand came up and brushed the fingers away. "Wh. . .where's Osamu. . .? And. . .and Dais. . .?" The boy on the ground blinked a little, eyes focusing slightly. "Who are you. . .?" He sounded dazed, voice cracked and rough and shaky like maybe he'd been screaming a little while ago. Well, his wrists looked slashed and his cheek was all but blistered away, so maybe he had been. Maybe he knew what was coming._  
  
_"You and me, we're the only ones here buddy." He put his hand back out, this time to shake, before realizing his new friend probably didn't have much energy to get up and bob hands all friendly-like right now, and dropping it lamely. "Name's Teyu. Dreamsinger." He paused, then added hastily. "My last name, I mean. Dreamsinger. . ." Laughing nervously--it was almost a giggle, geez lordy he was so _fucking_ twitchy--he rubbed the back of his neck again. "Heh. . .I'm kinda a spaz right now. Sorry."   
  
The boy on the ground blinked up at Teyu a few times blearily, shaking his head a little--maybe trying to get his bangs out of his face without reaching up, maybe just confused--and then pushed at Teyu again, trying to move him aside and failing miserably. "What happened. . .?"  
  
Shrugging, Teyu reached down, grasping the boy's hand and pulling him to his feet as he stood--catching him when he stumbled. "Eh. . .no idea." The kid was light, and felt as fragile as he looked: pretty sad, since Teyu was almost worried about the poor guy blowing away as he stood swaying back and forth, leaning heavily on Teyu's side. "So. . .who're you?" Yeah. Dumb question, but oh well. Man, but he didn't want to do this. . .  
  
The boy looked up at Teyu again, blinking blearily once more. "My name. . ." He seemed almost uncertain for a moment, and furrowed his brow a bit. "Ichijouji Ken. . ."  
  
"You think." The smile felt plastic, but he _did_ want to smile for the guy. Cute kid this Ken. . .poor kid, and Teyu didn't want to have to do this, not to this poor lost little boy with those weird hooded eyes.  
  
Blinking again, Ken lowered his head, brows still drawn. "Yes. . ." He laughed a little but it was tight and strange; shivered a little like he could feel the cold blue eyes of that strange and oily shadow watching from behind Teyu's. He looked up again with a distant stare, and Teyu swore he _could_--that strange tingle ran down his spine like when the Aunties Scanned him; like when Uncle Kai drew the ghosts into the room and they ran through your mind like bums in a junkbin. "I think. But right now. . ."   
  
"Let go, boy." The slick voice was still dry when it rang in his head, disgusted.  
  
So Teyu let go when Ken pushed at him again, and shook his head. Wasn't gonna do this, no way man wasn't gonna do that shit. He suddenly didn't want to go into this kid--nice kid, sure, but the eyes were vague in a way he didn't like, halfway between this and that when he didn't know what either was.  
  
"Idiot. Why would I need _you_ for _that_? Just a spark, boy." It snorted faintly, and Teyu closed his eyes when it dragged the red whip in his mind. "You're only good for that much, anyway."  
  
Beside Teyu, Ken was still looking upward and outward with abstracted eyes, blinking slowly every so often. He smiled calmly, bringing his hands up--cut and bloodied, torn from scrabbling at the rough pavement, wrists slashed and bleeding. "Right now, I'm not so sure. . ."  
  
Teyu opened his eyes to watch, and then closed them again with a small sound caught and choking his throat. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home and be Mindlashed or go home and be nailed in the coffin again or go home and have Auntie Elli scream him into the ground with rage or go home and. . .and. . .and _go home._ Just to get away from this nice kid, this frail pale little Ichijouji kid with the blistered face and cut hands and those freaky distant eyes.   
  
Because halfway between This and That, the sparks always, _always_ made it worse.


	6. Troubled

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on FF.net under the penname Osidiano.  
**Author's Note**: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. ^^;;; But I'm getting there, no worries.   
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the realease of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**6  
Troubled  
  
**

"You know I'm going after him."  
  
Miyako looked up at Daisuke faintly startled--in the long shuddering silence following his garbled explanation she had huddled next to the equally silent Hikari; he seemed deafeningly loud now, and strangely steady despite the tremble lingering in his hands.  
  
Rolling his shoulders forward a little, Dai crossed his arms over his chest in a huff. "Why are you looking at me like that. . .Don't you think I _can_?"**  
**

  


"Well. . ." Miyako shook her head. "You did say you didn't know what happened to him. . ."  
  
"So what?!" Dai stood up, arms still crossed. "I know _something_ happened to him, and that's enough for me. I'll figure it out and I'll. . ." his surety faltered a moment, and he blinked, arms falling to his sides again. "I'll. . ."  
  
Standing as well, Miyako put her hands on Dai's shoulders and pushed him back down to his seat on the couch. "Daisuke, he's my friend too, and I want to help too. . .but we don't have _any clue_ what happened. And you have to admit, it sounds pretty weird. . ."  
  
Dai scowled and kicked at the carpet. "Yeah. . .well I'm not making it up."  
  
"Nobody's saying you did." She looked over at Hikari--the other girl had been lapsing in and out of attention periodically, and now her eyes were vague again. It was strange to Miyako, seeing the bright eyes so vacant, and the small worried smile so far away; so she looked back to the somewhat less unnerving sight of Daisuke hunched on her couch like an unrepentant child. She didn't look at his hands gripping the cushion, though--somewhere along the line she had seen blood on them and it made her sick. "But nobody knows what to do, either. . .Dai, people don't just _disappear_."  
  
"But Ken _did_. So what do you have to say about _that_?"  
  
That computers don't talk back, either. Miyako looked back down the hall again, towards her room where the monitor lay on the floor amongst wire and casing; where the Digimon had retreated, where Poromon sat on the bed not knowing any more than Miyako or Daisuke or Hikari what the hell was going on here. Something was wrong here, and it was more than Hikari daydreaming into oblivion or a too-responsive computer or Dai watching Ken scream and bleed on the ground then disappear into the rain. ". . .I don't know what I have to say about that, Dai." She stood up again, rubbing at her temples as she walked towards the door.  
  
Dai turned on the couch, watching her head for the entryway. When she bent down to put on her shoes, he stood up. "Hey. . .where you going?"  
  
Looking over her shoulder through her hair, Miyako finished pulling her shoes on and opened the door. "Down the hall. He's Takeru's friend too you know. . .and Iori's. Just sit tight. . .keep an eye on Hikari, or something. . ." With that she was out, the door firmly closed behind her.  
  
Wrinkling his nose a bit, Daisuke muttered and dropped back to his seat, crossing his arms huffily again. He didn't want to sit tight. He had absolutely no interest in sitting on Miyako's couch and just waiting for her to get _more_ people to fuss over the problem instead of going out and _finding_ Ken and making sure he was okay. What if Ken was in some kind of trouble--and he probably _was,_ yeah, definitely--and needed someone _right now_? Disobeying Miyako was a _lot_ more dangerous than disobeying his mother, but what if Ken was in major, big-ass trouble, and needed his best friend to save his scrawny ass right this very freaking second? Dai fidgeted, looking back at the door again. "_Damnit_. . ."  
  


**~~~~~~~  
  
**

It was debatable, in this moment, whether it was Ken or Teyu that truly needed help right now.  
  
Arms folded over his chest, Teyu sat on a thick branch, legs dangling as he looked down at the form of Ken huddled below, knees drawn up and chin resting on them. The kid wasn't very threatening right now, with those creepy eyes focused again but crying, and with his torn palms and wrists wrapped with bandages Teyu wasn't stupid enough to travel without. The kid was lost, was confused and crying and about a billion _miles_ from threatening. Teyu had promised to help him home, but that didn't seem likely. He looked away again.  
  
"Can't you find someone else? I mean. . ." He shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck, and then the side. "I mean, to do it, or maybe to do it _to_. . ." The shadow inside tightened its hold, snapped and dragged that hot red whip along Teyu's mind, and he bit his tongue to keep from crying out. "Wh. . .why not. . .?"  
  
"No questions, boy. I am the master here."  
  
"But. . ."  
  
The whip snapped harder, harsher--Teyu gripped the branch to keep from falling, teeth piercing his tongue. "I said _no questions._"  
  
No questions. Cha. . .but you didn't learn anything if you didn't ask questions; except when you didn't learn anything if you didn't keep your mouth shut. Maybe keeping his mouth shut would hurt less right now. Probably keeping his mouth shut would actually hurt a _lot_ less right now, but considering how often he mouthed off to his Aunties he was apparently some kind of sucker for pain. And he really _didn't _want to hurt that frail little Ichijouji Ken--nice kid, really. He'd been real nice and apologetic, real polite and quiet. And he really _was_ afraid of that frail little Ichijouji Ken--creepy kid, really. Teyu remembered those distracted eyes and that weird little smile, and the kid _reeked_ of Shadow, maybe a little Void. So he spat the blood out of his mouth--carefully out to the side so it wouldn't hit Ken down there; it hissed when it hit the ground like acid, and come to think of it his mouth burned too. ". . .Why a Shadow spark, though?" He braced himself, waiting for the red whip to come again.  
**  
**It did not.  
  
"Why Shadow, boy?" The shade's voice hadn't lightened, hadn't softened--shit, it was still sharp snapping sarcasm and raw disdain, but he was used to _that_, and it didn't hurt like the whip did. "You look at him down there, and you have to ask me 'why Shadow'?"  
  
Teyu shook his head, and looked down at Ken. Yeah. . . "He's a nice kid. Why would you want to do that? Wake all that nasty black shit up. . ." Shaking his head again, Teyu shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself. He knew that story. . .good mind, good soul, but a bad heart beating bad blood.   
  
"Do I need to find outside supervision for you, boy?" The dry tone suggested that the shade had best _not_ have to find outside supervision or Teyu would be in _worlds _of agony, but he shook his head again anyway.  
  
"I donno. . .maybe you should." Bad blood. That was the smell, that was the story, the feeling in the aura--soft and light at the edges, but there near Ken's pale skin it got hard and dark, murder and hate. Maybe he had a beautiful mind, maybe he had a gentle soul--probably did, nice kid, that Ichijouji Ken. But there was no such thing as a bad person just a bad heart, and the vile blood that came with it. The thick mess in Teyu's mouth still burned, and he spit the blood out again, watching the red-black liquid hit a root, eat it away with a violent hiss and pop. Yeah.   
  
He knew that story.  
  


**~~~~~~~~  
  
**

Hikari had already heard Daisuke's story--she had gotten a delirious account from him on the way to Miyako's. Leaving the bus, and Ken suddenly simply falling, eyes rolled back. . .somewhere early in her second hearing Hikari began to see it in lurid detail; the long burn rising and blistering along one cheek, Ken's pale wrists splitting and bleeding into his palms and the peaceful, horrified small smile on his face. She was dimly not-quite aware of Daisuke and Miyako's debate, caught up in the strange half-lit world where Ken looked white as ice and his blood too, too red and his eyes vague when he stood and backed away from Daisuke, crying out 'go away, go away'.  
  
"Playing sleuth again, Hikari-chan?"  
  
She jerked at the sound; the low slick static voice slipping under her skin.  
  
"Or maybe. . ."   
  
The dim indefinite world of Hikari's vision blurred further a moment, and then Ken was gone, Daisuke was gone--she was alone in the Dark. Alone on the endless black sands, and the water was close behind her. Choking faintly, she closed her eyes.  
  
"Maybe it was playing Saint?" The frozen static was gone--instead it was another cold, cynical voice; mocking and familiar. "Maybe you were planning on playing Savior again, Hikari?" There was laughter, and a hand gripped Hikari's arm harshly, jerked her around so she stumbled and fell to her knees in the sand.  
  
"I want to help my friends." Hikari spoke softly, and with her eyes still closed to the black sands beneath her. She did not open them when a hand gripped her chin and pulled her face upwards, or when light fingers trailed across her face to push her bangs away.  
  
"You want to be a good girl again, don't you Hikari?" The burning familiar voice laughed, brushed icy lips across her forehead. "You want to be that bright little light again, cutting the dark for the people you 'love'. . ." The fingers burned where they touched her, blistered and froze her skin and flesh beneath. She would not open her eyes. She would not open her eyes. She would not--  
  
The cold lips were by her ear now--they curved into a smile as they spoke in that borrowed voice, the faint and frigid feathering of a serpent's tongue brushed her skin for a moment when they laughed against her. She would not cry out either. She would not scream.  
  
"What are you afraid of seeing, Hikari?" The voice moved, the cold and hands and lips--they were circling her, easy idle steps. "Do you know what you will see? Do you remember me. . .?"  
  
Not knowing if she would not or she could not stand Hikari remained on her knees, lowered her head once more. She wanted to go home. . .she wanted to leave this bleak vision of this heartless world, she wanted to leave that voice behind. She knew what she would see, and she would not see it.  
  
One chill hand stopped its restless movement, settled softly on her head, stroking her hair. "Dear Hikari. . ." The voice was a soft purr halfway between the familiar stolen voice and that agony static hiss, gentle and cruel at once. "Precious little light of mine. . .open your eyes, won't you? It's so much easier to see when you're looking. . ."  
  
Hikari kept her eyes shut. She wanted to go home. She wanted to leave the vision, and maybe if she told herself that long enough she would be saved from the Dark, from the black sands and the rushing metallic water behind her; blue-black and silver in all her nightmares, blue-black and silver here. She did not want to see.  
  
"Open your eyes, Hikari. . ." The voice was laughing again--it was _her_ voice laughing, bled together with that sibilant static but _her voice_ and she couldn't tell herself it wasn't anymore. "Open your eyes, because your friends are going to need that little light now, dear. . ."  
  
She would not scream.  
  
Opening her eyes more because she had to than because she chose Hikari told herself that. She would not scream. She was looking up, looking up to the dark dark sky beyond herself because that was who this was, exactly who this was. . .Hikari was looking up at herself and herself was wearing a small and poison smile as she stood with her hand on her own head. Herself with skin white in the cold, and eyes shifting metal that made called her and made her head spin and scream and howl with a hundred thousand voices as one.  
  
She would not. . .  
  
would not. . .  
  
scream. . .  



	7. Keep Your Friends Close

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on FF.net under the penname Osidiano.  
**Author's Note**: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. ^^;;; But I'm getting there, no worries.   
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**7  
Keep Your Friends Close**  
  


**  
**What was wrong with Hikari. The question had been on Takeru's lips when he put his hand to the doorknob, had been in his eyes since Miyako had hauled him from his apartment with a hasty explanation that Ken was gone and Hikari didn't seem herself and Dai sounded out of his head. It wasn't that he wasn't worried about Ken and Dai--they were his friends too, his very good, very close friends and he _was_ worried as all hell about them. But Hikari had a history of falling sick, she had a history of strange visions and dark dreams she hadn't told anyone but her close friend, her very closest friend about. Hikari had a history of disappearing into a strange place she couldn't describe, and once he had followed her to the dark land that still haunted him. What was wrong with Hikari was the question he wanted to ask as Miyako hauled him and Iori down the hall to her apartment, and it was the question that died on his tongue when he heard the strangled scream from beyond her door.  
  
For a second his hand froze on the knob, and then Miyako pushed Takeru aside roughly and barged in. She ran through the entryway not bothering to toss her shoes off, and both Iori and Takeru followed suit, the door swinging open behind them and hitting the wall. The sound echoed in Takeru's ears, a harsh and sharp banging that reverberated through his skull.  
  
In the life-worn mundanity of Miyako's livingroom the scene before the three stunned children seemed absurd. Hikari sat on her knees on the floor before the loveseat where she had apparently been sitting, hands folded in front of her but held together almost as if she were chained, trapped. Her head was back, tilted as if some rough hand had forced it there; her eyes wide and blank with a disbelieving horror, wide and blank like she wanted nothing more than to close them to a mindless terror and yet could not. There was frost in her hair; small and blistered burns feathered across her forehead, collected on her chin, curled down the side of her neck. Beside her Tailmon tugged on Hikari's shirt, hugged her and begged her and tried as hard as she knew to calm the girl, to silence the choked and trembling scream that tore out of Hikari's shuddering rigid frame on and on and on.  
  
At about the time Takeru realized Hikari was only screaming never breathing she stopped--suddenly, abruptly as if her throat had simply snapped closed on the sound and slaughtered it. Eyes still wide and unseeing turned to them, stared forever beyond them and welled with tears in one moment before they rolled back in her head and she collapsed forward onto the carpet.  
  
It may have been Iori beginning to say something, and it may have been Miyako suddenly snapping forward and dropping to Hikari's side; but something pulled Takeru from his deep shock and dragged him forward as well. He felt on some level as if he were watching himself move stiffly forward, watching himself kneel down next to Miyako and help her prop Hikari up, try to wake her up. She was gone again. Her hand was cold where he held it and yes she was breathing now but he couldn't hear it past the sound of her screams in his head, the sharp bang of the door in his head. Hikari was gone, she was gone into one of the dark worlds that tainted her dreams and hung like a shadow in the back of her eyes. "Hikari. . ." He squeezed her hand, closing his eyes a bit. "Come back Hikari, come on. . ."  
  
Behind them Iori blinked faintly, looking down at the couch he still stood beside. . .more accurately fixing upon a smeared handprint upon the cushion, dark and wet and red as blood. Right now, most likely, would not be the best time to wonder why Daisuke was not there.  
  


**~~~**  
  


"Yo."  
  
Ken opened his eyes halfway, lifted his head from his knees just enough to see Teyu drop down into a sitting position beside him on the ground with a plastic grin plastered to his face. Making a small sound in his throat, Ken lowered his head once more and closed his eyes again.  
  
The smile Teyu had bullied onto his face dropped, and he rubbed his neck again, sitting back against the tree trunk and looking at the hunched boy beside him. "Hey. . .cheer up, okay? I'll get you home, no worries. . .just gotta figure out how to get there from here, right?" He paused for a minute, waiting for a response he guessed wasn't coming.  
  
He was right.  
  
With a sigh, Teyu shook his head, folding his hands together and putting them behind his head so he could lean back, and look up at the branches. ". . .Must be nice."  
  
Ken stirred a little, but did not move. "What?" His voice was muffled against his knees, and he flinched faintly when he spoke--that burn must really be getting sore by now, if wasn't numb.  
  
"Home. I mean, if you wanna get back so bad. . ." Teyu shrugged, closing one eye and tracking a green leaf-shadow on the branch he had been sitting on before. "Cause this place. . .it seems pretty nice." When big ugly greaseball soul-suckers aren't chasing you. He almost grinned, but stopped at the menacing snap of the whip behind his eyes. _Or controlling you._  
  
For a moment, Teyu thought this new and equally feeble attempt at conversation was doomed to a young death as well, and then Ken lifted his shoulders a little, dropping them sharply again in a shrug of his own. ". . .It's all right. I'm worried about Wormmon, and Daisuke. . .they don't know what happened. . ." He laughed a little, weakly. "Dais probably thinks I was kidnapped by aliens. . ."  
  
"Aliens?" Teyu's eye came down from the dancing shadow, settled back on Ken. "Dude. . .he might be right. I'm kinda foreign, yeah?"  
  
Ken shook his head, looking up a little again, with a tiny smile. "Little green men in big flying saucers."  
  
Teyu opened his other eye, and rolled both up to look at the vividly purple-blue hair hanging in his face. "Well, I'm not green, and I'm not old enough to drive, so he's shit outta luck. So I guess your 'rents didn't expect ya home soon, huh?"  
  
The smile dropped from Ken's face, and he turned it against his knees once more without a single sound.  
  
Woah. Teyu sat up, eyes rolling back down as he leaned forward, trying to look at Ken through the awkward angle and the curtain of Ken's dark hair. "Hey. . .hey Ken, what's wrong? Did I say something wrong?" He probably had. . .Aw shit, that was a careless question. What if his parents were dead or in the hospital or something? What if the kid didn't _like_ his parents (that'd be just _wacked_), or what if he lived without his parents in a house full of people that hated his freaking guts (that'd be just_ freaky_)? What if--  
  
"My parents wouldn't notice." Again it was muffled against his knees, and tired this time. "I could disappear and they wouldn't even notice I was gone, except they wouldn't have anything to feel special over any more."  
  
Blinking, Teyu scooted forward, sitting right next to Ken and drawing his own knees up, resting his chin on the faded denim. That wasn't what he expected. . . Whatever he had expected, not _that_.  
  
That small revelation seemed to open Ken up a bit--his face still pressed against his knees, and his bandaged hands gripped tighter now, but that weary statement seemed to open some kind of floodgate for the kid and be damned if that wasn't bitter water. "I thought they'd learned. . .I thought they'd stop being that way, after all that happened. After all their apologies, all their reparations and all the time they tried to spend, I thought. . ." He snorted, snapped the words out short and sharp. "I thought they'd _grown up._ But it's only a year and now they're congratulating themselves on what wonderful parents they've become. They're still showing me off, but this time it's bragging about how quickly I've gotten better, and now I still see the disappointment in their eyes whenever I get so sick and tired of being the little genius I let my grades slack a little. When the doctor told them I had 'hostility issues'. Whenever. . .whenever I'm not fucking _perfect_. . . " The last word was choked, thick and violent; and his hands where they gripped each other around his legs were going white at the knuckles, straining and shaking.  
  
Reaching out, Teyu put a hand on Ken's back. "Hey--"  
  
The muscles tightened under Teyu's hand, and Ken shook his head, words hissing out. "I'd rather they hate me. Just so I knew it was for _me. . ._so I knew they felt something about _who I am _instead of what I represent. . ." He took a deep breath, and shuddered, shoulders slumping again. The flood was through for now--maybe he had spent the waters, or maybe he had just closed the gate but whatever it was Ken's next words were weary again, and quiet. "I. . .I'm sorry."  
  
"What for?" Teyu blinked. He might have almost been more surprised by _that_ than the outburst itself. "I mean. . .you needed to get that out, man."  
  
"I'm a complete stranger. I shouldn't be loading my problems onto you. . . You shouldn't have to put up with that."  
  
This time it was Teyu that said nothing for a minute, and then he leaned back again, hands behind his head and eyes closed. ". . .I'd trade you. I'd give just anything to be ignored for everything except what I represent. I guess maybe then they wouldn't always be so pissed at me, and maybe my Aunties wouldn't hate me so much. Probably uncle Kai wouldn't be so hard on me then except that he's always got a stick up his ass so that's just wishful thinking, and I think he actually might not mind me anyway. But I mean, if all I had to do was get things right Auntie El and Auntie Elli wouldn't always jump on my ass for being a moron and being halfass and being whatever else they wanna call me that time. And maybe Auntie Kat wouldn't push me around and call me a weakling for not being able to use those big honkin' Guardian weapons, because we both know I'm _not. _And Uncle Dane wouldn't keep trying to kill me because hell. . .what do I represent to _him_? Nothin' at all."  
  
He opened one eye to see Ken's head lifted, the boy turned to look at him with blinking, confused eyes. "What. . .?"  
  
"What? Hey. . .I'm just saying I'd trade you places. I'd rather be ignored than hated. . .it's not all it's cracked up to be, yeah?" At Ken's continued stare he gave his best cheese-eater grin, flashing a thumbs up with one eye still closed. "So now we're even, right? You load me with your shit, I load you with mine. Cool?"  
  
Ken blinked one last time, and started to turn away again. . .but then he let his hands go, smiling a little. Still weak, still strained and sad but a smile at that, so Teyu thought he had done pretty damn good. "I guess so. . ."   
  
"Yeah!" Teyu bounded back to his feet with an enthusiasm he didn't know he had in him right now. "And hell, now we're not total strangers anymore!" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder, putting a hand into his pocket and reaching down to help Ken up, though he doubted the boy would take his hand.   
  
The smile faltered for a moment as Ken looked at Teyu's hand, then came back just a little stronger. "Yes. . .yes, I guess we aren't, are we. . ." It was only one more brief hesitation before Ken reached up, bandaged hand taking the one Teyu offered to him and pulling himself to his feet. "So how far to home?"   
  
Beaming, Teyu socked Ken in the shoulder lightly. "Yeah, that's the spirit. Let's rock. Home is. . ."   
  
He only flinched a little as the red whip snapped again, and the low oiled voice hissed in his head in it's wake. "Don't get too attached boy. . ._he_ is a tool, and _you_ still have work to do. . ."  
  
Closing his eyes for a second, Teyu willed the smile to stay there, even as it felt more like a grimace. He didn't want to freak Ken out. He didn't want to worry Ken, nope, not now. Hey. . .they had something in common besides bad blood, and in Teyu's world that was a rare thing; rare precious thing and fuck no he didn't want to lose this tenuous fellowship. It felt so nice, to see someone smile at him, to take his hand. . . "Home is long way yet Ken, but we'll get there." He didn't really feel he had earned the right to sling his arm over Ken's shoulder like a good friend but he did it anyway. "We'll get there eventually."   
  
While he still had the chance.  
  


**~~~**  
  


The library doors made a heavy snap-_bang_ when Daisuke kicked them open so they slapped and groaned back on their hinges against the wall, but he ignored it like he ignored the flinch and glare of the librarian. He had more important things to worry about; he had rubbing the blood on his hands off onto his pants to worry about, he had going and finding Ken  
  
(_he's in trouble by now, 'Suke, oh yes you can put your money on that he's in trouble by now and you ain't there to help him, bad 'Suke bad)  
  
_to worry about.  
  
Not that any of that told him why he'd come to the _library.  
  
_Making his way down the tall aisles of books the undeniable impulse to come _here_ began to fade, and he ceased rubbing his hands on his pants and instead put them into his pockets. Why _had_ he felt like coming to the library was a good plan, anyway? And why the heck hadn't he brought   
  
(_he's awfully loud, 'Suke Don't think you could hear me with him squealing in your ear, 'Suke)  
_  
Chibimon? And why was he heading back to the very back of the library--the very very back where the old catalogues and the old newspapers and the old, old computer lab nobody ever used anymore were?  
  
In a way, it almost felt like someone had taken his wrist and pulled one hand out of his pocket--through his sleeve it felt like his skin was on fire--and placed his palm on the slightly warped wooden door against the back wall, pushing it open. It made an aged creak, a nerve-grinding squeal that set Daisuke's head and aching wrist to throbbing. From inside the room itself there was a sudden scrambling jolt--he caught a glimpse of wide pale eyes and teal hair rushing by as someone tore out of the room almost knocking him down. Daisuke started to turn, started to look back at who the heck that was and ask what had scared them so bad, but the same hand that had taken his wrist and pushed the door open had now pulled him in and pushed it closed._  
  
_The feeling fled and Daisuke snapped his hand back, cramming it deep into his pocket again as he looked around. A dim bulb hung from the ceiling, flickering and flyblown, but it was enough to see from. Apparently the janitor had missed this room a couple hundred times-- cobwebbed and with the dust in a thick grey-brown-white fuzz over everything except a few small and scuffed footprints. Computer cords--the machines were probably older than Daisuke himself, ancient IBM fossils from the DOS-only age of digital-green and blue word processors--lay scattered on the floor, most rat-chewed and not a one leading to an outlet. It was a dead end, and the dust made his nose itch and his eyes water, and Daisuke didn't have the faintest stinking clue _why_ he was wasting time here.  
  
_Liar. Such a horrible liar, 'Suke. . .  
  
_Daisuke jumped with a faint and startled yelp, turning and looking around for the source of the laughing comment. "K. . .Ken? Ken, that you?" He blinked, squinting towards the shadows at the back of the room.   
  
_Stick to the truth for me, won't you 'Suke?   
  
_That _was_ Ken. It _had_ to be Ken--not that Ken had ever called him anything like 'Suke' but who else had that soft measured voice, that certain teasing sarcasm? Nope, nobody else, not that Daisuke knew or would ever know. "Ken, what're you doing here? Hey, are you okay?" Pushing a dusty chair aside Daisuke started back towards that shadowed corner Ken's laughter seemed to be coming from.  
  
_Suits you so much better, you know. . .  
  
_"Hey. . .why don't you answer me? What happened back there, anyway?" Yeah, there was _something_ back there in the corner under the cobwebs. . .   
  
. . .but it wasn't Ken.   
  
Dai stopped in front of the piled monitors, blinking dully, that oh-so-confused look finding its way onto his face again. Nobody back here, and come to think of it no footprints in the thick dust, but he had _heard Ken_ damnit, and damnit Ken should have _been_ back here because of it. Scowling, he kicked at the floor, sending up a cloud of dust. "_Damnit_!" He sneezed, and this time kicked the stack of dead monitors. "Damnit damnit damnit _DAMNIT_!"  
  
The pile tumbled down, sending up more fuzzy clouds in the dark. Sneezing again, Dai started to back up, only for a falling computer to crash into his legs, knock him to the ground. He heard his D-3 fall from his pocket with a dust-muffled clatter--he was one of the few Chosen Children to still carry it with him _everywhere_--and slide away on the floor. Muttering a few choice curses, he sat up a bit, looking around for the blue and white digivice. "Aw come _on_. . ."  
  
Before they could find the D-3, his eyes found the monitor that had hit him. They went wide, and he pushed himself back a bit on the ground, hands reaching back to seek something to pull himself up with--_they_ found his D-3, and gripped it tightly. Something was wrong here. Yup. Something was freakycrazyweirdass _wrong_ here, hell yes. Because that cracked monitor with it's painful, eye-burning digital blue screen said _aren't you coming?_ in glaring white ancient typeface. He could almost hear the machine laughing at him, it laughed at him with that soft and gentle measured voice, that carelessly kind and sardonic voice he knew way too well to think it was anyone else.  
  
Taking a deep breath, choking and sneezing on the dust again Dai sat up the rest of the way on the dirty floor, held his D-3 out with hands steady enough to almost surprise him. "You think I'm gonna abandon my best friend?" Then you can kiss my ass you fucking schizo-box. You can fucking _eat me._  
  
Something in the ancient gnawed wires must have clicked then, something in the timeless tongue of binary must have gotten through. Because then the gate found a way through; because then the cracked screen exploded into soundless shards and light. . .  
  
and it did.  
  


**~~~~**  
  


The librarian scowled again as another child slammed the doors open, this one headed out--a somewhat familiar little girl with odd-colored hair and too-large clothing she may or may not have remembered seeing come in earlier. These children, they were so loud, completely disrespectful of public property. Clicking her tongue, the librarian moved from her desk to close the door against the wind in the wake of the girl's passage.   
  
And what were those children doing there in the back anyway, if not vandalizing? Not a thing back there except old newspapers and old catalogues. Well, and the door to the old computer lab. But no children were getting in _there_, not anymore.  
  
It had been boarded up, after all, for five years.


	8. Towards Deeper Waters

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on FF.net under the penname Osidiano.  
**Author's Note**: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. Closer and closer, kiddies. ^.^;v  
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the dissapearacnce of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**8  
Towards Deeper Waters  
  
**

"Honestly Hikari-chan, you _should_ go back."  
  
Sitting on the sand with face in her hands Hikari shook her head hard--it pulled the blistered burns down her neck, made them ache and scream. Without looking she somehow knew her other self, the self with the mad metal eyes and the taunting laughter, was sitting on a log now, legs crossed and leaning back languidly. A _log,_ of all things, and for some bizarre reason Hikari's mind chose to fix on that odd little detail. A _log_, driftwood, really, that shouldn't be there in the first place because there were no trees on this beach. No trees, no life, no living thing--not on this beach, not in this ocean, not in all this horrible world. Only her on her knees in the monotone sand beneath a monotone sky, only her other self with the small smile so viciously affectionate.  
  
"And why not? They're worried about you, you know. . ."  
  
Hikari shook her head again, trying so hard to ignore the cold burns on her neck; somehow the sand had worked its way into the broken skin, rubbed and scratched within the raw flesh in tiny blades of salt. She wanted to go back. She wanted to go _anywhere_, anywhere but here. . .  
  
"I'm not going to _keep_ you here, Hikari-chan. Not against your will, oh dear no."  
  
Liar. Her hands moved from her eyes to her ears, trying to block her own voice out. Liar, you'd keep me here forever no matter what I said. You _brought_ me here against my own will; why wouldn't you _kee--  
  
_"Oh, _hush_." Her voice was sharper there, snapped off and impatient. "I'm not a _liar_ Hikari, and I'm just not that vicious. You can leave any time you like." Again without looking up from her closed lids or the tedious, terrible sand Hikari saw herself on the log swing her legs down over the edge. She was sitting like a schoolgirl on a bench now, with her knees together and her shoulders forward from the way her hands rest on the wood. "You _came_ in your own sweet time, after all. Brought _yourself_ here, you know."  
  
No. No, I didn't. I would never come back here again; never never never. Hikari shook her head again, kept shaking it just to be doing _something_. Speaking, somehow, was no more an option than a necessity. Speaking, somehow, would chain her here forever and ever. I would never come back here, not after all this place did to me. Not after all the dreams, all the nightmares. Not after--  
  
"Spare me the theatrics."  
  
Hikari caught the scream in her throat, only jumping faintly when that twisted parody of her voice purred against her ear again. Something of a whimper though--strained and frightened and pleading, lonely and desperate--made its way out when that cold hand came around her from behind, low beneath her ribs and reaching up to grasp her neck again. Something of a whimper that was too small and terrified to become a scream, as the cold lips pressed against the back of her neck again, kissed her and whispered to her softly against her broken skin.  
  
"You're just _so_ dramatic, Hikari. Your words lack a certain. . .honesty. A certain purity. . ." Her other self pulled her back, pulled her back and held her as a mother held a child to their breast in the dark. Beneath the cloth of the other's shirt, Hikari could hear no heartbeat, could feel only empty cold.   
  
"A certain _light_ if you will." A small giggle--girlish and innocent the way Hikari had been when she was small, when she was sick every other day with the heat or with the cold. It made her skin crawl. "And _will_ you, Hikari-chan?"  
  
Held against her own icy chest, held in her own icy arms Hikari felt herself going numb, drifting away into a stuporous sleep. But no, _no_ she couldn't afford to sleep here, not any more than she could afford to speak. This time there was more at stake. . .  
  
The icy hands ran through her hair as they held her close, stroked her cheek softly. "Now now, Hikari-chan. . .be a dear, won't you? Onii-chan will worry about you. Miya and Take, why, they're scared to death. And dearest Kenny. . .he needs all the help he can get." The hands tilted her face up gently, the thumbs stroking softly across her tightly closed lids. "Sweet little light of mine. . ."  
  
She choked--her voice almost from her own mouth this time, her smiling icy lips less than an inch from her own as they spoke. Somehow they were near the water now, she and herself--the waves curled and lapped about her legs, around her waist hungrily. They spoke. . .they laughed and cried and murmured with a hundred thousand voices. Screamed and begged and cried for release, wailed down her spine and nailed her to the ground with desperate pleas but she could still _hear_ herself, that sick vicious whisper that used to be her voice.  
  
"Poor little light, do go back to them. . .who can you trust, if not yourself?"  
  
Hikari did not speak, and she did not think, and she did not leave. A part of her let go right then, just let her closed eyes relax and a tear track down her blistered cheek as that frigid, numb sleep enfolded her here in her arms. Because right now. . . she didn't know.  
  


**~~~~**  


  
Hikari was crying when the ambulance took her away.   
  
Again and again Miyako kept coming back to that; to the way her tears had retreated when she fell to the floor. To the burns that kept rising and blistering and breaking even as the medics had lifted her onto the stretcher. If Hikari hadn't looked so tired, so worn and beaten Miyako might have thought the sudden relaxation was good, the release of that lonely tear was _good._ As it was she hunched on her couch, holding Tailmon and Poromon close. Why would Hikari be afraid to cry?  
  
Screw _that_. More important, why hadn't anyone heard Hikari _screaming_?  
  
In some ways that was it-- that was what _really_ bothered Miyako about this, the part that really got to her. That horrible endless screaming had drawn _no_ attention, no questions, no worried/nosy/frightened/irate neighbors from their houses--rather, the arrival of the medics had brought them. It still rattled in her skull and, looking at Takeru with his hat pulled down over his face and his hands not shaking but _twitching_ on his lap she knew it was doing the same to him. Looking at Iori sitting on the floor against the wall looking completely lost, a little scared and as always a little angry it had to be doing the same to him. But no one else. . .  
  
"Maybe we _are_ all going crazy. . ." She closed her eyes, murmuring the words out into Poromon's pink fluff of feathers as she snuggled him disconsolately; a frightened child. She was almost surprised to have no answer to that, no scrawl against her eyes in bright archaic script.  
  
She saw instead Takeru picking up the phone and beginning to dial with his jerking hands. She started to ask, and then did not. She knew the number well enough--had it memorized as most people will with their most frequently used numbers. And knowing that she knew just why he would call, and just why he would be so edgy, and just why it was so imperative that it be done now, right _now_. It had occurred to her, too, but then she supposed she just didn't have the guts to do it.   
  
It might be better for Hikari's family to hear it from her friends first.  
  


**~~~~  
  
**

_Now._   
  
Ken was a ways ahead of Teyu when the word came to him; the pale boy crouched down on the ground in front of what looked like a TV stuck in the dirt amongst the trees. He'd been watching Ken but not really _watching_ him, thinking just what a weird-ass place the Overworld was sometimes, all these trees and TVs and nutso crackshit going on; all those crazy critters hanging around all over the place with their binary and bitrates that made his head ache when he started to think about it. Yeah hell, he'd been thinking about how much he hated computers and it popped into his head outta nowhere--it might have been his greasy hitchhiker but with just one whisper he couldn't tell.  
  
Up ahead Ken stood, brushed the dirt from his knees--he seemed desensitized to his shredded hands by now. "Well, it's a way home. . ." turning back to Teyu he shook his head. "Except that I don't have my D-3. . ."   
  
Teyu shook his head, shaking the clinging word from his mind. It fell away but left a haze, a kind of fuzzy mental-dustcloud. "Your Deedoo-wha? Deedlit? Lodoss War? Huh?"  
  
Reaching up to push the dark hair from his face, Ken blinked a few times at Teyu. "Uhm. . .no. My digivice." He sighed. "So I suppose you have an older model, then, and can't open a gate. . ."  
  
"Uh. . ." Teyu blinked again, still shaking his head slowly. Digiwhat? Gate he understood sure, who _didn't_ understand 'Gate,' if they got themselves stuck in the Overworld? Funny name for a Key then. . .or something. "Uh. . . yeah. Yeah, I guess I do, huh?" At Ken's odd look Teyu grinned again, shrugging. "Or. . .maybe I left it at home?"  
  
For a moment Ken said nothing, just continued to give him that odd look, one eye faintly narrowed. ". . .Teyu?"  
  
"Uhm. . .yesken?" That twitchy-jittery shiver was starting to crawl down his spine again; it turned his response to that jumpy one-word question. Now. Now. Now.  
  
". . .Teyu, if your digivice is at home, then how did you _get_ here?"  
  
Now. Now. Now. Do it now. "I. . ." He laughed a little, eyes closing as his jumpy grin twitched wider, and he put a hand behind his neck. "I'm special?"  
  
"Teyu. . ."  
  
"Or. . .I don't know?" Teyu's hand ran forward a little, rubbing at his neck. He was starting to sweat a little now, and maybe it really _was_ that stupid slimeball pulling another trick on him. "I mean. . .shit Ken, I ain't got a _clue_ what you're talking about. The Digi-thingy. . .it's a Gatekey, right?" He continued, eyes open but rolled up to look at the branches. They seemed tighter at the moment then they were a while ago, but hey and hell, maybe he was just getting claustrophobic. "But I don't _have_ a Gatekey, and standard Keys aren't supposed to work around here, and y'know all truth the Aunties never taught me how to work the Lynklanes and the Overworld anyway so I don't see what difference that would make and--"  
  
Ken blinked again, now faintly confused and curious. "Gatekey? Lynklanes? Overworld?" He shook his head. "Teyu, now _I'm_ lost. . .what are you talking about?"  
  
"Eh? We're _in_ the Overworld, Ken. . .I mean, I don't know what _part_ of the Overworld 'cause all I ever heard of was the Lynklanes and this sure as hell ain't it but. . . but you knew that, right? Hell, you're a smart kid. . ."   
  
Teyu's hand dropped from his neck slowly. Ken was staring at him with a sort of bizarre curiosity--the kind someone gets when a person they previously thought sane went schiz-ish. ". . .You. . .really _don't_ know what I'm talking about, do you. . .?" He said it slowly, ever so slowly like the thought had just occurred to him. And. . .yeah, it had. Ken was a smart kid, that much was pretty clear; smart kid and he seemed to know where he was and what he was doing. Hell, smart kid and got a strong signature on his Threads, that was for sure--even _Teyu_ could tell that and Reading wasn't really his strong point, not like that. So how. . .?  
  
Now. Now stupid, do it now.  
  
Ken shook his head a bit, slowly as well. Maybe it had just occurred to him, too, that something was just a little off here. "This is the Digital World, Teyu. I don't. . ." A sigh, and he brought a hand up to rub at his temple. There was blood soaked through the bandages in a few places that Teyu hadn't seen before, and his fingertips left thin crimson streaks on his skin. "I haven't ever heard of this 'Overworld,' or these 'Lynklanes' of yours. . ."  
  
Digital? Teyu put a hand over his eyes--the red lines on Ken's face seemed livid in his vision; too bright and somehow dark at once, garish like paint on the pale skin. Now. Now. Now. _No. _ Good gods and their _mothers_ his head hurt--a dull low throbbing, sick sliding pounding all through his skull. Digital. Binary shiznit, raw fact and static--digital made sense, sure. . . Aw _christ_ why did it hurt so damn _much_?  
  
"Teyu?"  
  
Now. Now do it now do it now do it now. Fatal sin, Teyu--you got too attached, went and let yourself get _attached_. You jumped in when you couldn't see the bottom and now you're in deep, now you're feeling the hurt, aren't you? _Now_, stupid sonofabitch do it _now_ before you _really_ can't, before you really, _really_ fuckin' ain't got a chance. Before you really get hurt, huh, 'cause you aren't the pain-sucker you think you are. Teyu's hands went to his head, and he bit his lip--right then it could have been himself _or_ the shadow; the voice was low and slick but the words were all his.   
  
He opened his eyes to the blurry sight of Ken's hands coming up to steady him--the red streaks on the bandaging snapped across his pounding vision like that bloody, burning whip. Through the berating voice and a fuzz of radio-station static he could hear Ken asking him what was wrong, did he need to sit down, what was going on.  
  
"This is your only chance boy." The red closed over his vision sharply, and Teyu choked--he could taste blood in his mouth again, could feel that essential something inside cracking again. "Your one and _only _chance. I won't waste supervision. . .I'll just replace you."  
  
The crack was getting wider. The red was sharpening, shifting and hazing into that greasy, thick shadow of purpleblackred again. The Aunties were gonna kill him. The Aunties were gonna fucking _kill him_, and here he was about to thud out again. Hell. . .Ken was a nice kid, but. . .but sometimes nice kids got in the way, right? No big loss, lots of nice kids in the world, right?  
  
Teyu giggled a little, cracked and delirious as he groped out blindly, caught Ken's bandaged hands so their fingers tangled together. He felt his jaws lock into that broad cheese-eater grin--his mouth burned, his face burned where the blood was seeping from his mouth. "Hey. . ." He wasn't sure if Ken was saying anything now. . .wasn't sure of the look on Ken's face. All he could hear was that greasy, hungry shadow pulling the crack wide, snapping the binds and feeding off the insides. "Hey, no hard feelings, huh Ken?" The angled face came into focus in his bleary sight, the hungry inhuman blue eyes. Just a Spark. . .just a Spark. . .  
  
It could have been the pain. It could have been the exertion, the lethal risk of running Threads in the Overworld. It could have been the shadow draining him. It could have been the huge, the violent and coiling and hateful explosion of raw _Void_ that exploded from kind, worried little Ken's aura when the Spark hit--it was something, it was everything.  
  
The red left Teyu's vision, and his world went black.  



	9. Faulty Communication

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on FF.net under the penname Osidiano.  
**Author's Note**: I think everyone should know that since I can't for the life of my recall how I started this story the first time, the chapters might not be so great until I get to a part where I once more know what I'm doing. Closer and closer, kiddies. ^.^;v  
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the dissapearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**9  
Faulty Communication  
  
**

_Beep beep, 'Shiro-chan.  
  
_Eyes lidded and tired, Koushiro frowned faintly at his computer. His fingers hovered over the keys for a moment--and they were only trembling a little, now, he might have been proud of that if he weren't so tired--before descending to type out a reply: **That's not funny.  
  
**_Sure it is 'Shiro-chan, but it wasn't supposed to be. This morning. . .now that was funny, don't you think?  
  
_Again Koushiro paused before typing a reply--this time he looked down at the floor, the carpet perfectly clean, not a single stray sliver of shattered glass. Nor, of course, was there any blood on his arm, or any trace of injury. They had all vanished quite conveniently the moment his mother had come in to call him for breakfast, and though Koushiro _was_ by then beginning to question his sanity he wasn't _quite_ crazy enough to try explaining to his parents. Shaking his head, he scowled back at the screen. **Fuck you.  
  
**_Charming. But I digress--beep beep.  
  
_Grinding his teeth a bit, Koushiro almost told the other to shove it up their ass--figurative or literal, whatever would shut them up. He stopped himself, though--gripped his hands together until the nerve-bitten nails dug rough crescents into each palm--and closed his eyes. If this was a joke, it didn't matter. If this was a game though, if it was a _game_--and at this point it sure as hell _felt _like he was being toyed with--then maybe he had to play along. Beep beep--who knew? It might actually be important. So he pulled his hands apart and wiped the clammy-hot palms on his pants, stared at the words blurrily near on the screen, and dropped his hands to the keyboard.   
  
**Beep beep. **He paused, then shook his head. A peculiar buzzing, a strange static fuzzing was clouding his mind. 'Beep beep' seemed the wrong thing to type in reply to the same, but then there was the answer like a shining coil in the bleak hazy cloud. **Cue the sirens, call the priest; something wicked this way comes. **It looked strange there on the screen, but it was right. Somehow, it was right.**  
  
**He almost heard it laugh against the static migraine, soft and sliding and positively _delighted_.   
  
_Oh yes indeed, 'Shiro-chan, yes _indeed_! Except something wicked's _here_ already. . .I suppose you missed the memo._  
  
Memo? Koushiro blinked again, one hand leaving the keys to rest against his forehead--his hands were hotter than he thought, or maybe all the blood had simply rushed from his face to leave it cold and dry as carbon ice under his sweating palm. Memo? He had gotten a mem--  
  
_Beep beep, stupid. Good God, 'Shiro. . .do I have to draw it in crayon for you?  
  
_Beep beep. That was the important part, strange as it may seem. Beep beep beep beep bee--   
  
He suddenly jolted up, knocking over his chair with a muffled thud against the carpet. Leaning forward over his desk he grabbed the mouse cord, hauled it up from where it had fallen in the earlier chaos and dragged the cursor across the computer screen. Beep beep. . ._duh. _He felt like smacking himself when he minimized the current program window to reveal his 'memo', his elusive and silent 'beep beep'.  
  
In the corner of his desktop, the small red alarm light continued to flash.  
  


**~~~~~~~~~~  
  
**

Taichi was restringing a guitar when the phone rang. It was a nice piece of work, lovely dark red and in good condition despite intensive use; one of Yamato's old ones, and Yama took fastidious care of any instrument that came near his reach. It didn't _need_ to be restrung either, of course--as a gift to Taichi, Yamato had made sure it was in top shape from end to end. But Taichi was doing it anyway, when the phone rang, because shortly after he developed an interest in playing the thing from his musician friend he had picked up that particular nervous habit.  
  
And. . .why not be nervous right now? There had been that strange call and stranger encounter with Koushiro earlier, and then coming home to an empty house--he understood that his parents were out today, but where was Hikari? It was raining hard enough, too, that the thick wet-pavement and ozone smell of outside had seeped into the house and permeated every corner. Damn, but he hated that smell, and _damn_ but he wanted some company right now.  
  
He almost dropped the guitar on the second ring, having not heard the first and being practically on top of the telephone. Taichi saved it before the neck hit the ground, mumbling a curse and reaching for the handset with a plan to hold his tongue just long enough to greet the caller politely and make sure it wasn't his parents. He examined a scratch on the guitar's body where it had hit the table, and scowled. Then the caller would die. Yup.  
  
There was a brief buzzing, a digitized hum and dialtone before a voice came through the cracking line, thin and distant. "Onii-chan. . .?"  
  
Again, Taichi almost dropped the guitar--and now the phone as well. He almost bit his tongue off to curb the sharp words he had intended, managing by some miracle to save both. "Hikari?"  
  
"I don't feel good, onii-chan. . ." Her voice sounded plaintive in the static; small and worried and pleading. Vaguely, he heard her cough.   
  
Tai bit his lip. Was she starting to get sick again? It hadn't happened for years, but if she was out in that rain. . . "Where are you? I'll come get you. . ."  
  
"You said it would be okay. It's okay, isn't it. . .?"  
  
"Yeah." Shit. She was choking on her words, sounded like she was crying and coughing at the same time--it left her choking, breathing shallow on the other end of the line. "Yeah. . .yeah 'Kari, it's okay, it's all okay; everything's gonna be fine. Just tell me where you are, okay, and I'll come get you. . ." Oh please. . .oh please don't let her pass out or hyperventilate. . .  
  
"I. . .I'm sorry. . ." She choked again, sobbing, and the static almost swallowing her fragile voice.  
  
Hang on, hang on. He leaned forward, clutching the phone close and hard until his fingers ached. "Sorry? Don't be sorry 'Kari, its no big. . .come on, where--"  
  
"I'm sorry I couldn't. . .I couldn't kick the ball straight. . ."  
  
Tai's eyes went wide; he drew the phone away from his face and stared at it in disbelief. She _what_?  
  
Sob and static were one now, harsh and shrill and tinny from where the phone was held at arm's length. "Please don't hate me, onii-chan, please don--"  
  
She had to be sick. Had to be sick and delirious and out of her head, because that was so many, many years ago. It had been heat stroke back then, or something. . . something to do with the sun. Holy shit, he remembered it like yesterday, sitting there in the hospital waiting room with wide eyes and his soccer ball clutched to his chest like a talisman. They had to hook Hikari to the machines, they had to take her away and put her on life support, and she had just looked at him with those tired, dying eyes and said 'I'm sorry I couldn't kick the ball straight. Please don't hate me." His mother screaming at him what the _hell _had he been thinking. Holy shit.   
  
The buzz and hum sharpened, screeched loudly and gave way to a low, staccato ticking for a moment. He scrambled a bit, distantly heard the guitar hit the carpet with a muffled discordant crashing, pulled the phone to his face again. "Hikari?" It felt like his eyes were going to burst from his head, it felt like he was screaming her name because his throat burned. He had, quite suddenly, remembered that he had never once assured her that no, he didn't hate her. That yes, he forgave her; that it was all okay if she couldn't kick the ball straight. "Hikari! _Hikari_!"  
  
Snap and crackle, a voice faded in, broken with interference and stammering with something else."--spital. W. . .we do--t kn-w what h--"  
  
The line cut out, eaten alive by the roaring electric buzz. By then, however, it made no particular difference. By then the phone had slipped from Taichi's trembling fingers. By then, Taichi was out the door.  
  


**~~~~~~~  
  
**

"Sora!"  
  
Lifting her head from a magazine ('Tell the Boy You Love Him--Embarrassment Free!' the article proclaimed, and half a paragraph in she had decided it was pure bullshit anyway) Sora blinked; shaded her eyes and squinted into the teeming crowd. She heard her name again, a squealing exclamation, and spotted a waving hand coming nearer--pale pink nailpolish that sparkled under the harsh airport lights.  
  
"_Sora!_"  
  
She stood and waved back, dropping her hand just barely in time to catch her ecstatic and babbling friend in a tight hug. "Oof. . .hi Mimi. How was your flight?"  
  
Mimi pulled away, still holding onto Sora's arms and smiling with her typically unique, purely contagious exuberance. "Horrible. I had to sit next to a nasty old man that kept leering at my chest. But oh _Sora_ it's so great to be _back_! I mean. . .New York is great to visit but _God_ what kind of masochist wants to _live_ there?"**  
  
**Sora rolled her eyes, shaking her head even as she laughed. "You do, for the shopping." She tugged on Mimi's grip, pulling her away towards the baggage check. "Come on. . .let's get out of here."  
  
It was only a moment before Mimi was no longer content to be led by her friend, and grabbed Sora's hand to charge ahead through the crowds purposefully. "You know, one nice thing about America is you learn you don't _have_ to be polite when you want to get somewhere. You _can_ push people out of the way sometimes, Sora." And she did so. . .repeatedly. Sora sighed, shaking her head once more. . .but it _was_ a faster way to the bored, sleepy huddles around the sluggish conveyer.  
  
Folding her arms over her chest, Mimi continued to chatter at top speed as they waited by the belt. "So, how's life? Wait. . .how's your _love_ life?" She giggled a little, at Sora's flush and evasive mumble. "Ai. . .Sora, when are you going to say something? He's a cute, sweet guy. . .if you're not fast he's going to find someone else!"   
  
"Mimi. . ."  
  
"You're too shy. It's a good thing I'm here; _I'll_ shape you up in no time."  
  
Sora sighed again, and shook her head. She did that an awful lot around Mimi. . . She loved the other girl to pieces, really. But her outgoing, flirtatious friend just had to learn that everyone was _not_ her. Or at least _remember_ what she had learned. . . "Look, Mimi--" She paused, then changed the subject. "I'm glad you were able to visit so soon. I was really surprised when you called me."  
  
"Hm?" Mimi leaned forward to peer at a bag, then back again; rocking her head back against a support column. "Oh! Right!" She looked from the ceiling to Sora again, eyes closed as she continued to smile. "Well, I just had to get the soonest flight, you know? Since you invited me and all, I mean I just couldn't _wait_. . ."  
  
Sora stopped listening just about then, as Mimi continued to talk. She could go on _forever_, if given half a chance. Or less. It was nice to see her again, to know what she looked like again--almost never quite the same way twice, except for that glowing smile and those big brown eyes; her hair and outfits changed far too often to track with photos--but she hoped that maybe Mimi would keep it down a little on the trip back to the apartment. Or talk _to_ her, instead of _at_ her. Sora wondered, maybe, if that wasn't what she needed right now to cheer her up--she had felt, lately, a woeful lacking in people she could sit down and simply _talk_ to. Flat, frank, girl's-night-out, no-holds no-secrets _talk_ to.  
  
Suddenly Sora's thoughts hit what felt like a speedbump at seventy; and she jolted slightly. Something Mimi had said, while she had still been halfway listening, sounded wrong. She held a hand up to silence the other girl, putting her free hand to her head. "Wait a second. . .Mimi?"  
  
Blinking a little, Mimi raised both eyebrows in confusion. She reached up, and pushed Sora's hand back down from where it had gone up near her face. "What?"  
  
". . .Mimi, did you just say I invited you to visit?"  
  
"No. . .I said that a _while_ ago." She wrinkled her nose a little, the smile fading slightly. "Sora, have you been ignoring me?"  
  
Sora blinked again, and shook her head; this time in confusion. "Mimi. . .I _didn't_ invite you. Like I said. . .I was completely surprised when you called, and said you were coming. . ."  
  
"But. . ." Now it was Mimi's turn to look confused--she straightened where she stood, arms falling slowly from their cross. "But you _did_. I remember you calling me, and asking me to come as soon as I could. . ." She shook her head, reaching up and playing with a strand of carefully dyed hair. "You said you missed me, and you really wanted to see me. . ." She laughed a little, halting and unsure now. "We talked for hours. . ."  
  
"I did. . .I do. But. . .I haven't made a long-distance call in _months_. My calling card expired, and I'm not allowed to call distance without it. I just got it renewed yesterday. . .I _couldn't_ have called you."  
  
There was a long silence--Mimi almost spoke, then closed her mouth again as she turned the implications over in her mind. It was pure reflex when she reached out to take her bags from the conveyer, pure, silent habit and reflex as they walked out of the airport together to stand by the bus stop. Sora watched the road fixedly for the bus--she felt she would stare right through it even when it came, unseeing. Mimi stared up at the dark translucence of the shelter roof, watching the raindrops strike and slide.  
  
Five minutes more, and then the bus came--they packed Mimi's things into the luggage rack and dropped into a pair of empty seats near the back.   
  
With a heavy exhalation only_ just_ too much to be a sigh, Mimi let her head hang back on the seat, still staring up. ". . .Sora?"  
  
"Hmn. . .?"  
  
Mimi paused, and shook her head before turning it to face Sora in the seat beside her. Her wide eyes were serious, beneath the colored bangs and light but ever-present eye makeup. "If _you_ didn't call me. . ."  
  
Sora's cellphone began to ring.  
  


**~~~~~~~~~  
  
**

Somewhere vaguely akin to the digital world, hands clad in black gloves ducked and wove; the fingers bare to the cold, the unnatural deathly chill. Against the drear and crumbling backdrop of a proverbial graveyard the skin seemed pale, the cord hanging suspended was bright and incongruous--mismatched eyes, one red one blue, observed it in narrowed concentration. Somewhere across the void, in the dark, something screamed and chattered. The sound fell into absence. . .but the damage was done.  
  
"Christ on a stick." The young woman wrinkled her nose, and dropped her hands to her lap. "It's not even quiet enough around here for Cat's Cradle. . ." Scowling, she tossed her hands, flinging the tangled string from her fingers. "I _hate_ Cat's Cradle! Hmph. . ." Nose still wrinkled, face still plastered into a frown, she crossed her arms over her chest. She hated her _job_.  
  
Again, sound rose from across the chasm--this time the woman rolled her eyes, rocking up to her feet impatiently. She cupped her hands over her mouth, and leaned out over the edge. "_SHUT UP! NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR IT!!!"_ The sound--this time a haunting, mournful weeping-- faded out, silenced. She beamed, sitting down again.  
  
Or starting to.  
  
She stopped abruptly in the middle of her action, then straightened--hidden in her half-tousled hair, a tiny pair of wings atop her head perked and fluttered. Somewhere. . .somewhere in the Digital World itself. . .  
  
She squeaked faintly, a deliriously happy little giggle as her hands clapped together. "You _want_ me to come back?" Again the small squeal of delight, and she hugged her shoulders. She bobbed her head quickly as if nodding, suddenly filled with a giddy, almost lovestruck enthusiasm. Needed her, he _needed_ her! She did not even cast a glance over her shoulder as she all but skipped away from her post--she didn't want to see _that_ place, in all it's gloomy glory, not right now, not when she was _so bloody happy_.  
  
Her Masters had set her to guard it long ago; that towering sanctuary of death, of hate, of horror and despair. But now a different master called her.  
  
And to him, she would _always_ come.  
  



	10. Alice

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  
creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic.And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on FF.net under the penname Osidiano.  
**Author's Note**: Uhmmm. . .yes. I think I'm just about there: to a point I have a clue, I mean. Sorry for the lack of updates--my computer crashed with this chapter on it. :x But, the comp is back and so am I.  
This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the dissapearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**10  
Alice  
**  
  


The only sound in the room, aside from Hikari's shallow, sobbing breaths, was the beep and hum of hospital monitors and machinery.  
  
Takeru was alone in the room with her, now; was holding one cold, lifeless hand in both of his as if to warm it somehow. Outside the door, he had ceased to hear Taichi's muffled voice rising and falling in a heated argument with the doctor over something Takeru didn't remember--maybe Taichi had been removed; maybe he had been sedated. There had certainly been something wrong with him when he came bursting in the hospital doors, practically _screaming_ to see his sister. . .to know what happened, why couldn't they tell him what was wrong the stupid ignorant _fucks, _why couldn't they do their damned jobs and _do something_.   
  
Maybe that was where Miyako and Iori had disappeared to, then--off to see Taichi, to talk to Taichi and try to calm him down. Takeru didn't remember if they had said where they were going. He didn't even remember them leaving.  
  
"Hikari. . ." He spoke softly, meshing his fingers with hers. "Hikari, please wake up. Wherever you are, please come back. . ." Wherever. . .God, he wished he could follow her again. He thought he knew, after all, where she had gone. He had, after all, followed her once before--saved her and brought her back. But. . .  
  
"But it's different this time, isn't it Takeru?"  
  
Takeru jumped slightly, Hikari's fingers almost slipping away as he jerked his head up. When had the door opened? He blinked at the young man--the boy, really; only a little older than Takeru--across from him. When had he come in, and sat down there beside Hikari's bed? "Who. . .? When. . .?" He blinked a bit, vision hazing and watering briefly--the boy seemed, for a moment, no more than a colored blur of pixels before clarifying once more.  
  
The boy shrugged narrow shoulders, leaning back to tap at a monitor with one finger before he reached up and pushed his glasses back on his nose--they were battered and a bit smudged; the left lense cracked. "I don't think either of those really matter right now." He looked back at Takeru with a faint and faintly crooked smile, head canted to one side at a minute angle. Under the harsh hospital tracklights Takeru could not see the boy's eyes--only his own confused reflection. "Do you?"  
  
Blinking again, Takeru simply stared at the boy; somewhat at a loss. There was _something _familiar about him, to be sure. . .but it was a distant kind of recognition he felt, like seeing a face in the crowd for a second time; like meeting the face in a not-quite-noticed photograph. "A. . .are you. . . a friend of Hikari's. . .?" It was a stupid thing to ask, a stupid thing to say--he was not sure though, just now, if there was anything that would_ not_ have seemed stupid.  
  
"Nn." He reached up again, this time to tug at his green shirt where it slid faintly from one shoulder--his hand stayed there, fingers restlessly toying with the fabric, and the navy collar of a shirt beneath. "I wouldn't say that, no."   
  
"Then why--" Takeru made an odd sound as he was cut off by the boy leaning across Hikari's still form, placing one icy hand over Takeru's mouth. He recoiled immediately, even dropping Hikari's hand--the boy's skin had felt dead, had been icy so that Takeru could feel small burns blister into life on his trembling lips.   
  
The boy sat once more, folding both hands back into his denim-clad lap and head canting ever so faintly--a twitch to one side, really, the gesture almost reminiscent of a hunting snake. "Even if I _were_ a friend Takeru, how would I know what you were thinking? No, Hikari isn't familiar with me, technically speaking, and I don't think she'd like me much anyway. But she's what I'm here to talk about. . .Or the two of you, in any case."  
  
The expectant silence found no reply from Takeru--he had knocked his chair down as he stumbled back and now stood; one arm raised in the act of rubbing at the icy burns, and eyes wide. Who _was_ this? Who was this strange boy with the torn and faintly tar-stained clothing; the wild dark hair and the creeping, vague feeling of familiarity? Because he _was_ familiar, somehow. . .somewhere Takeru had seen him, or heard his voice; or something so close it blurred into the same. And why did his touch burn like that? _How_. . .?  
  
"You ask too many questions, Takeru. Has anyone ever told you that?" He rolled his shoulders in a shrug, continuing before Takeru could respond--just as well; he hadn't intended to. "After all, if you'd just listen for a moment you'd know--in the final analysis, the answer to all of them is the same."   
  
Takeru's jaw worked a moment, in an effort to force words beyond the knot in his throat--it pulled and stretched at his burned lips, and he stopped, simply shaking his head. Too many questions? He hadn't asked anything. . .hell, he hadn't _said_ anything, only stood staring at this strange, strange boy with his crooked little smile. _How_? How was this happening? Or maybe it wasn't. That seemed reasonable, sure. . .slipped off to sleep, stuck in a strange delirious dream with--  
  
"Mmm. . .no, Takeru." The boy stood now, stretching his arms up above his head--back and neck and joints popped almost grotesquely, as if the action had snapped them back into place after some horrible misalignment. Takeru flinched at the sound of it. "It's. . .well, something like that, Takeru; but not a dream the way you think, sorry." His hands dropped from up above his head, one resting on his hip. "Which _also _isn't what I'm here about, not yet."  
  
Again Takeru choked faintly, hand moving from his burned lips to cover his eyes. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. . ._What _was happening? He realized at last that he no longer held Hikari's hand, and moved back beside her bed warily. Her fingers were still cold and unresponsive against his, when he took them again. ". . .Who are you?" He did not look at the boy. Rather, he kept his eyes on Hikari--the bandaged burns and the teartracks on her ashen face. Had he said he knew how to help Hikari. . .? Takeru couldn't remember. . .  
  
"Not in so many words, but yeah, sure. If you really _want_ to help her, that is. . ."  
  
"I do!" Takeru snapped his head up, azure eyes narrowed in perhaps the single most frigid glare one could muster under such circumstances. Was he trying to suggest that Takeru _didn't_ want to help? Or maybe that he was _afraid_ to help? Looking at the boy's amused little smile, Takeru thought that just might be it. "Tell me how, if you know. I'll do anything. . ."  
  
The boy nodded, then turned his head; one hand rising and sweeping wide into a gesture which encompassed the back wall with all its machinery, its softly murmuring monitors. "Ask them, then." The boy looked back at Takeru once more, and he thought, for a moment, that he had seen some vague flash of violet and metal behind the boy's glasses--hadn't they been cracked a minute ago?--that made his head scream and spin. He brought his hands to his head, trembling in the wake of the brief and agonizing static; trying to hold onto the boy's enigmatic words. "They still know, after all. . .they always know, don't they? Always have precisely the answer you're looking for; or seem to."  
  
For a moment Takeru stared at the boy, not understanding. . .   
  
And then he saw it. How could he have missed it? It was only the most distant corner of his mind that noticed the boy with his crooked smile was gone, and only the most distant corner or his mind that noticed he had let go of Hikari's hand; had left her side and walked to the back wall with its clickwhirrhum of hospital machinery, it's soft and steady monotony of beeps and sighs. What did he see there? What was it. . .that he was reaching out for, that his hands would so brush the screen and slip through it into the trembling electric synapses beyond the glass? Takeru. . .wasn't sure, really.  
  
But it knew. The green light and the green darkness reached out to take him and he closed his eyes to the static, the familiar shadows of blue-black and silver across his skin. It had the answer he needed, true; it knew where he needed to be and--  
  
The only sound in the room aside from Hikari's shallow, sobbing breaths, was the beep and hum of hospital monitors and machinery. They hid the turning of the lock, in that otherwise empty room, quite effectively.  
  


**~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
**

He had fallen asleep on his notes again.  
  
It was, perhaps, the third time in recent weeks that Jyou had opened blurry eyes to blurrier images of black on white; diagrams and notes and formulae scattered haphazardly across his desk, and his pencil fallen to the floor from tired hands. At first he had been embarrassed, but now, on this third (fourth, maybe fifth) time, he found himself becoming irritated with himself, and worried. What if he were ever to fall asleep like that in class? What if he was working himself to hard on this, what if he had taken on more than he could handle? What if he wasn't cut out for--  
  
The heavy slamming on the door came again, cutting roughly in on his thoughts and announcing itself as his reason for waking. Jyou blinked, and adjusted his glasses where they had nearly fallen from his face in his doze as he stood. "Coming. . ." Even his voice sounded tired, and heavy--he removed his glasses briefly again to scrub at his face, trying to wake up completely. It did not help, but he crashed into the doorframe of his bedroom and that did the trick nicely. He muttered something not quite a curse, and then called again to the insistent pounding. "Coming! I said I'm coming already. . ."  
  
Jyou let his hand rest on the doorknob for a moment, listening. There was a vague mumbling from the other side, a furtive sound of shifting; the dry slide of fabric, and the low bumping of sneakers under shifting weight. He blinked slowly behind the thick lenses. Even from through the door, their was an almost palpable tang in the air--and animal thing not quite fear but the anticipation of it. Curious, and worried, he turned the knob and slowly opened the door. . .  
  
Only to have it rammed open at the first sign of movement. From beyond a vague and jittering blur burst in, into him, past him. For a brief, long moment Jyou had the impression of an animal, of desperate dark eyes and dusty red. He realized he was falling only when he felt a jarring stop. Finding himself on the ground in a rather uncomfortable sprawl, Jyou blinked up at his 'animal'; at the mumbling muttering intruder over the tops of his now-crooked glasses.   
  
"Uhm. . .Koushiro? Is some. . .thing. . ." He trailed off into a quiet pause as he took in the harried state of his friend--the wide darting eyes and pallid, almost plastic-looking skin; the constant movement and the fluttering, shallow quick breaths. A part of him--the part of him that was still screaming mad and not simply irritated or worried or embarrassed about his falling asleep on his homework--was already making its prognosis. He silenced it with a cough, and distracted himself by returning his glasses to the full upright position. ". . .wrong?" The end of the sentence was belated, tasted lame and leaden on Jyou's tongue, but Koushiro did not seem to notice. He made no indication, in fact, of even being certain Jyou was _there_.  
  
"Jyou? Jyou. That's you, right? Of course. Yes, right." He nodded, a rapid series of jerking head-bobs which perfectly matched his babbling, jerky words; and unslung his laptop from it's holder on his back. It may have been the same one, for all Jyou knew, that had seen them through the Digital World and back again those years ago. "I have to be sure you see--I really really have to be sure it's you. Because it might not be you, you see, and if I told you and it _wasn't _then I would have wasted so much time and I really don't think we ha--"  
  
Jyou reached out and tugged on Koushiro's pant leg. "Koushiro. _Koushiro_."  
  
Cutting the word abruptly, Kou reached up and rubbed his hand across his forehead. He blinked rapidly, and ran his tongue along dry lips. "What?"  
  
"Breathe." Jyou released the fabric--it felt grimy, but not dirty if that made any sense; like clean clothes worn through a greasy cloud--and stood, brushing Kou's hand aside and letting his own palm rest on the other boy's forehead. It was cold, and clammy with sweat. "Now slow down, and tell me what's wrong, and why I wouldn't be me, and why you don't think we have any time."  
  
"Ah." Koushiro breathed at last, a deep shaking intake; he looked as if he had somehow forgotten to get around to breathing, or thinking straight. He clutched his laptop to his chest as he spoke, but did not open it. "It's. . .it's really quite simple, really kind of complicated and Taichi didn't believe me. . .you will, won't you Jyou? Yes. Yes yes, fine, good."  
  
Jyou blinked again, somewhat bemused by all this. His head was pounding where the door had rammed his forehead, and he still wasn't _quite_ entirely awake--all in all there was a rather surreal quality to the encounter and conversation. He resisted the urge to pinch himself.  
  
Koushiro was still talking. "--so you see I told him but I'm not sure he believed me and that just might be part of it. I think there are certain rules we have to follow--I've got it figured out, you see--and one of them I think might be that nobody can know." He nodded again, chewing his lip. "I had to come tell you though, because the memo. . .I forgot at first but then I remembered the memo the message the warning; something's going on Jyou, and it's part of this because. . .because. . ." He stopped, then forged ahead again before Jyou could say anything. "I had to come quickly. I tried to take the bus but I couldn't because--"  
  
"Koushiro, you walked?"  
  
"No. No no no." Kou blinked up at Jyou, from beneath Jyou's hand, as if it were the most ridiculous question in the world. "I ran, of course. No time to walk."  
  
Quiet for a moment, Jyou moved his hand from Koushiro's face, then returned it. "Koushiro, you live on the other side of the district." And Koushiro, though healthy, was surely not athletic enough to _run_ so far.  
  
"Yes. Yes, and see that's why I wanted to take the bus but I couldn't, because of the girl; so I ran because it was almost as fast, I think."  
  
The creeping feeling of surreality was growing. Jyou moved his hands again--he had discovered they were shaking ever so faintly against Koushiro's cold plastic skin. ". . .What girl, Koushiro. . .?" He was almost afraid to ask.  
  
"The little girl on the bus. She had a stuffed animal, and it was green--she asked me if I knew where to find Alice, or about the rabbit hole and I had to tell her no." He frowned, almost flinching, and looked away. There was that feeling again, the animal almost-fear hovering at the edge of his voice. "I guess I was lying, and she wasn't happy about it. . .so I had to run. Couldn't take the bus. . ."  
  
Growing, still--Jyou gave in to the urge and pinched his arm. It hurt, and it felt like a snakebite in a bad dream--cold and damp from Koushiro's forehead. He licked his lips, mouth feeling strangely like cotton. What was Kou talking about? What little girl? Who was Alice, what was the rabbit hole, how was Koushiro lying to say he didn't know about them? His mind filled with questions, each more meaningful, more meaningless than the last. He settled on one, and it too tasted like lead on his dry tongue. "Koushiro. . .what did she do. . .?" He should not have asked.  
  
Koushiro's wide, harried black eyes came up to meet his own solemnly, and he lifted the laptop away from his body, holding it out with a reverent fear in its own right and way childlike. His fingers trembled faintly on the edges of the folded machine, then pulled them apart, and open. "She told me." His voice had calmed now. . .cleared from mumbling delirium to that faint, hoarse whisper.   
  
The blank, black screen shivered to life--it made no motions of its normal starting but scrolled with numbers, ones and zeroes that spilled across the monitor. It was strange, that Jyou should suddenly feel that he could not, that he dare not look away from them. They were. . .beautiful, in a strange way, almost liquid. They were frightening, in a strange way, and he felt more and more that this was all some strange and elaborate dream. That he must, at this moment, still have his face pressed into scattered homework.  
  
His eyes felt heavy again, his world felt dim and shuddering around the edges again. Across vast and misty distances he heard a soft and frightened voice--whose he could not remember, or why it spoke such words: "And she showed me. . ."  
  
The numbers spilled across the screen, spilled across his eyes.   
  
The dream ended, and there was only sleep.  
  
  


**~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  
**

"Hey Yama, someone here to see you."  
  
Staring through a screen of filmy white smoke with his back against a cold wall, Yamato almost ignored the summons. He would have; if the questioning, puzzled note had not suggested something of vaguely more interest than watching Takashi lounge and read his magazine. He had read the captions on the cover photo hours ago, before Takashi bent it over backwards and before the beginning and ending of practice, so that now only the vague memory of wide and mournful grey eyes remained. Yamato flicked his fingers disinterestedly, and the tattered remains of a cigarette crumbled and fell from them--a hovering fan had handed it to him before practice, male or female he didn't remember, and he had let Father Time smoke it to the filter for him. He looked down at the dead stump he was left holding before he answered, and dropped it as he spoke. "Friend or foe?"  
  
Akira shrugged, fiddling with his glasses. Five minutes ago it had been a paper cup, five minutes before that a pencil, five minutes before _that _it had been his keyboard. Some days Yamato found it irritating; for now it was just a part of Akira and that was fine. "Hey, I don't know. I sure haven't ever seen 'em before, but you know lots of weird people so. . ."  
  
Yamato raised a brow faintly. "'Em'? What's that--him, her, or them?" He stood, but only partially--he let himself lean back against the wall, and debated taking out his guitar to play a bit more before heading home as their absent band member had already done.  
  
"It's. . ." Akira paused, not taking the jibe with his normal wry smirk and scowl but rather looking even more puzzled than before. "It's. . ." His hand left his glasses, circling uselessly in the air like a dizzy, drowsy sparrow. "Hell, I don't know what it is." His gesturing hand dropped, and tucked disconsolately into the pocket of his jeans. The admission seemed to confuse him even more: Yamato wondered absently if, up until now, the other boy had acknowledged his failure to identify the stranger.  
  
"Screw it." Yamato looked at Akira once more at the frustrated words--he wasn't sure when he had looked away, but the smouldering cigarette butt had briefly been more interesting. "You can figure it out yourself, right? It's your visitor. . ." He slid his arms into his jacket, and waved to Yamato and Takashi. "I'll see you guys. . .practice tomorrow, right?"  
  
"If you say so."  
  
He favored Yamato with one of those wry smirk/scowls this time. "I do. So you better be there, because I know where you all sleep." He waved then, and walked out with Takashi's laughter following him--and some crude comment no doubt, but Yamato had missed it this time and it was probably recycled anyway.  
  
The building--was it a warehouse? It reminded him, sometimes, of a warehouse--was quiet for a while then except for the turning of thin pages, and the trapped vibrations of their music in the walls and floor. Yamato found himself wondering, after the passage of minutes, if his visitor was still waiting for him outside. Shortly after, he actually remembered he had a visitor.  
  
"Crap. . ." He muttered the word, shaking his head as he straightened from the wall. He wasn't rude like that, not really--just there were those times he felt so detached, and then he felt like crap afterwords. He wiped his mouth on the back of his wrist, and looked over at Takashi--the drummist had abandoned his music mag and picked up something else; possibly, knowing him, pornographic in nature. "Hey." When there was no reply, he picked up the dead butt and flicked it. "_Hey_, drummer-boy."  
  
Takashi jumped with a yelp when the old cigarette landed in his lap, and scrambled to his feet as if he expected to burn him. "Don't _do_ that! Scared the shit out of me!"  
  
"Whatever. I'm out." Yama jerked his thumb back, indicating the door. "Lock up when you're done, okay?"  
  
"Fine. Asshole."  
  
Yama let that slide with no more than a smirk and a tip of two fingers which was not quite a wave, as he slipped out the door and into the cooling air. He closed his eyes for a moment, and breathed deeply--the air was almost clean out here, compared to the menthol-smoke behind the door; he smiled a bit with the rain-scented breeze on his face. It would be a good evening. . .it felt like a good evening, caught midway in this respite from the rain, and maybe he would stop by to see Takeru later. They could watch monster movies together while the sky poured down. Maybe they--  
  
The thought halted when he opened his eyes, and he blinked faintly, reaching up to brush wind-tossed blonde bangs from the blue. His visitor, apparently, was still there--the tiny figure was apparent. "Hey. . .did you want to see me?"  
  
It stood in a puddle, shoelaces untied and clothing faded--to Yamato there was the impression of vivid color, of bright pink and something else gone shallow with time and wear. The only brightness which remained was held in the stick-like, pale arms--something jarringly green and purple, with glassy dark eyes. The figure itself--and Yamato could, now, understand Akira's uncertainty--made no response, save that the lowered head, whose angle and pale brown bangs hid the eyes, was touched by a tiny toneless smile.  
  
Yamato frowned a little, and moved towards the child. "Are you okay. . .?" For surely the child _looked_ sick, almost skeletal in its clothes, and that odd shade of pale. "Where are your parents?"  
  
The small figure shifted, tilted its head ever so slightly. The hair seemed, from this new perspective, more ragged, and a not-quite dusty shade of blonde. "Mommy and Daddy. . ." the child spoke slowly, as if unsure of it's voice--an uncertain voice, yes, and in more ways than one. At the first it had sounded distinctly female, high and sweet; but now it was bland, and indistinct. ". . .don't live together, anymore. . ."  
  
Feeling his throat close slightly, Yamato nodded. He must have still been in that detached, aimless mood of his because he couldn't quite bring himself to feel sorry, that this child had to live with a broken home; even knowing from the inside, he could feel nothing but the tired desire to walk away. ". . .Where do you live. . .?" Or run. He didn't want to take the child home--strange child, had the clothes seemed time-dulled pink before? They were aged green now, and the thing in those pale arms something vaguely resembling white. Still smiling, the faceless faded child. He didn't want anything to do with it.  
  
"I'm lost. . ." The voice now was fading again, but into something rather than out of--male now, the petulant innocence of a little boy. "I'm so lost." Only one hand clutched the indistinct lump with the glossy black eyes now; the other hand stretched, reached out for Yamato from within its tattered sleeve. "Take me home Mister? Please Mister?"  
  
Yama took a step back, shaking his head faintly. Excuses tumbled through his mind--he picked them up, tossed them aside. Why did he need an excuse? Why couldn't he, why shouldn't he help a sick child home on a cold rainy day? He scrambled, in his mind, and finally choked out something--not what he wanted to say but something and that seemed, in this odd and numbing not-fear, quite the accomplishment. "I. . .I thought you knew my name. . ." It did though--it had come to see him. Hadn't Akira said that? Didn't it. . .didn't it _feel_ like that?   
  
"Uh-huh." The child nodded sagely, still reaching out. Its reach strained for a moment, and then relaxed so that it stood, hand up as if expecting  
  
_(knowing)_  
  
that Yamato would come and take it in just the barest moment; once everything was all explained. "You're Mister Alice." The child smiled happily, and looked up at him. "And we're going to the rabbit hole."  
  
But they did not.   
  
Because then it looked up at him, and Yamato saw. . .something. Something blue and silver--something like the looking glass, or it's cold brother the sea. He did not know then, he would not know later behind his locked door and with a handful of painkillers and trembling breaths. Because then Yamato saw something, heard something felt something that entered through his eyes and stabbed into his skull; that ran down his spine like wild knives, like needles on the raw flesh all so rusty, rusted metal on the raw nerves and nails on the board and _oh god it hurt_. Because then, just then, he felt his hand drawn to the one outstretched; the pale unnatural stick fingers, sharp as bone. Because his skin brushed them, and it burned colder than ice so that blisters clustered and popped on the pads of his fingers.  
  
Because then, Yamato ran.  



	11. Big Brother is Watching

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original  


creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic.And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi, who can be found on Fanfiction.net under the penname of 'Osidiano'. The first line of this chapter comes from a fanfic by my good friend Delle.  
**Author's Note**:This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the dissapearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
  
A HUGE apology to everyone at FF.net for my strangeness, bitchiness, and moving-around-ness; and of course for all the false alarms. I'm here to stay this time.  
___________________________________________________________________________________  
**11  
Big Brother is Watching  
  
**  


_All of life's best distractions have the word 'fuck' in them.  
  
_Miyako had been trailing behind a doctor down the halls when they passed the monitor; had been hanging behind him and numbly nodding her head as he told her and Iori (in the convoluted tongue that doctors use) that they really didn't know what was wrong with Hikari, that they really didn't know what to do to help Hikari and essentially that while she would probably be just as well off with her friends and family they wanted to keep her at the hospital, the bastards. Miyako had been wringing her hands and occasionally looking back down the sterile white walkway to the door--long out of view--behind which they had left the sedated but still rebellious Taichi in a nurse's care, when they passed the monitor. She choked, and did a double-take, absolutely certain but at the same time completely unsure that her eyes were playing tricks on her. She had skidded to a halt in her tracks, and when she looked again the words were different.  
  
_Ah! Very good Miya-chan. So nice to know you're paying attention. _There was an incessantly chirpy quality to them, despite the blocky and ancient typeface, as if she could hear the writer of the strange messages laughing in her mind--the feeling was sharp, and static. The words soon dissapeared, to be replaced by a new message. _No worries dear--I don't really mean that, though your reaction seems to support the idea. You can close your mouth now.  
  
_For a moment she drew a blank on the last comment, and then Miyako realized that her jaw was indeed slack as she stared into a vacant hospital room, at the computer (a heart monitor?) whose power was clearly off; the cord unplugged and neatly coiled away. She _did_ close her mouth, but it only stayed closed for a moment before beginning to work in disbelief; in an effort to speak and voice a hundred questions.  
  
_People are staring Miya-chan. Come in, won't you?_  
  
Come in? Come in and do what? Did it want her to talk to it again, to sit and speak with another disconnected monitor? Miyako swayed on her feet--oh god, was she going to faint? She found herself wondering again if maybe she really _was_ going crazy, or imagining this, or dreaming this or--  
  
"Miyako?" Iori spoke softly from just behind her, and took her rigid hand. "I'll go in with you, if you want."   
  
She blinked, snapped from her near-swoon by surprise, and stared at him as he continued quietly. His eyes--too solemn, and faintly narrowed now--did not move from the monitor in the empty room. "I don't think the doctor has noticed we're not still following him, anyway."  
  
For a moment she said nothing, and then squeezed Iori's hand slightly. She, too, spoke quietly--silence seemed important at that moment, though she did not know why. "You see it too. . .?"  
**  
**Rather than speaking a response, or nodding his head, Iori pulled on Miyako's hand faintly, and started to walk into the room. "I. . .think it might be better if we don't think about it." His voice caught faintly, and his hand shook ever so slightly where it held onto hers--trying as always to seem so much older and in control.  
  
Looking down at him Miyako felt. . .a regret, of sorts. A strange foreboding, an almost-fear that begged her to turn away and take Iori with her--far, far away and pretend this was not happening. To escape it. . .  
  
_Worry worry, Miya-chan. _Mid-way through the message, the typed words began to take on a slightly more fluid look; began to become that archaic scrawl she had seen before on her own blank screen. _Do you think I'm out to get you? To lay bloody hands upon the pale neck of innocence?_ The poetic words, if one called them that, mocked her, laughed in sliding sibilant static. Behind the elegant handwriting long columns began to run the screen in vivid, data-green blurs--perhaps, once or twice, Miyako's eyes caught a zero or one.  
  
_You might be right, I suppose.  
  
_Somewhere echoing down the halls she heard running footsteps; shouting and a staccato jerk-pounding sound. They seemed distant--they seemed ominous, and she held tighter to Iori's hand, pulling the younger boy close to her side and putting her arm around him. She did not look down at him. The aching bright green of the scrolling numerals would have burned against the deeper green of his eyes; and so she did not look down but watched with strange fascination as the letters no longer typed but carelessly scrawled themselves out. **  
  
**_In a very roundabout and wholly uninintentional manner; but right at that.   
  
_Outside the pounding and voices grew louder--something about a jammed door, an unstable patient and damnit why won't it_ open_? A handful of hospital staff ran down the hall outside the room--they did not glance to the side, they did not see the young boy and girl clinging to each other with uncertain eyes before a dead screen run with elegant white and blinding green. Perhaps, even if they_ had_ looked. . .they would have seen nothing.   
  
Beside her, Iori ceased to move forward. "Miyako, wait. . ."  
  
Wait. She stopped, blinking, to realize that she had very nearly walked into the monitor. A shiver ran through her--the thought of touching it chilled her, made her skin crawl--and she looked away from it. Against Iori's eyes the green _did_ burn, and mesh strangely--green on green on green forever, as if the colors swallowed themselves; or his eyes. She looked away from him, as well.   
  
"Miyako, isn't. . ." He paused, pulling on her hand faintly. "Isn't Hikari's room down there. . .?" We should check on her, his voice added. We should go, because right now I'm _scared_ but I don't want to admit that. He pulled her hand again: oh please Miyako, can't we please go and check on her?**  
  
**The computer--or rather, whatever was _using_ the computer--answered before Miyako had the chance. _Hikari-chan isn't in her room, dear._ More than ever Miyako felt that she heard it more than read it--_must _have heard more than read it, because she still stared fixedly at the blank wall and nowhere near the screen. The quality of the smooth, static voice was almost a purr, and from the monitor or near it came a soft sound--a dull stacatto ticking that seemed to fill the room like water. _Hikari-chan's an awful long ways away. . .so much farther than a hospital bed.   
  
_Outside--in another world that neither Miyako nor Iori could still hear--the low buzz of a caretaker's powertool droned through the halls. There was the thud and clatter of a door falling from its hinges; there was a brief chatter and hush. Inside the room, despite its open door, only hush reached through that terrible and trembling sound.  
  
_They aren't going to find her there, Miya-chan. ****_  
  
Miyako closed her eyes to the wall.  
  
_What if you're right, Miya-chan-- in a terribly roundabout  
  
_"Quiet. . ." She whispered it, choked the word out as loud as she could beyond the dull and metallic lump in her throat. It was lost in the sound, in the  
  
_and fully unintentional way, Miya-chan--  
  
_voice that wasn't really a voice because nobody was saying anything. Because there was no one, there was nothing in the room except for her, and Iori, and an empty bed, and  
  
_if I really do mean to throttle the poor, pitiful remnants of innocence   
  
_a heart monitor with its cord unplugged and coiled almost _too_ neatly on the trolley below it. Somewhere after the last 'Miya-chan' she suddenly realized she had found a change in the voice--somewhere after the last 'Miya-chan' she realized that the voice which was not and could not be a voice was familiar in a  
  
_(terribly roundabout and fully unintentional )  
  
_nightmarish way she could not put her finger on. Was. . .less static, less sibilant but no less low, or cold. Which gave her, surely, no more comfort except perhaps in the fact that for all of its words it at least was familiar;_  
  
from her pale little neck?****_  
  
was somehow at least _human. _Her hand left Iori's and she covered her ears to close it out--the disdainful mocking, the carelessly cruel sardonism. It slithered through her fingers and still she heard it whisper, felt it fall like cold glass at her ear._  
  
You had better hurry, Miya-chan._  
  
She nearly screamed--it felt in that moment as if thin and icy lips murmured the words just short of touching her hand; it felt as if gloves hiding hands that almost burned like frost had touched her face, had wrapped arms around her briefly. Where the unseen arms circled her, something hard and metal at the wrist dug into her side. _You had better move fast. Because the ball's a rollin', pretty girl; and we don't _play_ slow ball.  
  
_A small, a living and warm hand reached up for hers and she clutched at it gratefully--clutched at Iori's trembling hand, held it against her and choked a sobbing breath when the boy's touch banished the frigid hands and too, too familiar voice. She opened her eyes faintly only to find them filled with cold tears. . .only to find that they were turned, once again, to the monitor with its vivid green and vivid white. The message--blocky, basic typeface once more--was simple but strange now  
  
_(The water's always deepest in the shallow end)  
  
_and, sitting upon the coiled cord as if precisely where they belonged, were two small objects. White, and color; and a soft glow. . .  
  
Miyako did not move, and so it was Iori that reached out to take their D-3s from their place on the trolley with his free hand. He looked up at her for a moment, watched her tremble more than he and then simply held them both close against him.   
  
Outside, sound resumed with a violent snap that shattered the tick tick ticking to harsh shards. A cry, people scrambling and shouting and a violent cacaphony: Where where, _how_ it isn't possible it can't be where did she--  
  
Iori bit his lip, and closed his eyes to the screen   
  
_(the bottom's always farther than it seems)  
  
_and closed his ears to the noise; to the panic, the fearful shouting which could only have one particular meaning. He clung to Miyako's grip, and he held his hand out--the D-3s felt cold, burned against his palm. Was this the right choice? His mouth moved minutely to form the words, but he did not know what they were--what if this was the wrong choice?  
  
There was light, and hush once more.**  
**

  
~~~~~~~~~~~  


  
Considering herself primarily a woman of action, there was little Tailmon hated more than being left behind.**  
  
**But left behind she had been indeed, and now she slouched against the leg of Miyako's bed, eyeing Hikari's white and pink D-3 with narrowed eyes as she tossed it from paw to paw. Moving in and out of her peripheral vision Poromon busied himself with cleaning the floor of wires and computer parts; while above her on the bed itself Wormmon's sobbing had faded to wet sniffles and the occasional hiccough, and Chibimon's loud and pleading 'don't cry's trailed off to soft sympathetic mumbles. Something was wrong with Hikari--horribly, horribly wrong in ways she dare not imagine--and she had been left behind with the children; left behind to babysit. 'Digimon won't be welcome at the hospital', they had told her; and ushered her back here into Miyako's quiet room. She had stopped trying to swallow the resentment quite a while ago.  
  
"It's not right. . ." She hissed the words, ears laying flat and tail lashing. She should be there for Hikari. She _knew_ that smell--that coppery seawater smell like too much water diluting too much blood--and she _dare_ not leave her Hikari alone to that. Dare not trust the hospital not to push her further away. It wasn't right. It wasn't right. It wasn--  
  
"I'm worried too. . ."  
  
Her tail paused in mid-lash, then snapped into the rest of the motion as her eyes wandered from the digivice to Poromon--he was hovering just in front of her now; a woeful ball of pink with nervous blue eyes. He fidgeted under Tailmon's silent glare, feathers ruffling slightly, and then continued. "I'm worried about. . .well, about all of them."  
  
"All of them," a soft growl, the faint twitch of claws--she wouldn't really hurt Poromon, but even the bluff felt good right now, "aren't suffering like Hikari is." There was a certain satisfaction seeing Poromon cringe like that, and she couldn't bring herself to feel bad for that cold pleasure.   
  
"A. . Ah, Tail--"  
  
She held up a paw to silence him, ears pricking up and her foul mood pushed aside--there was a sound at the window; a small skittering of small claws. The hair along her back and long tail began to bristle and rise, and she stood, brushing past the younger digi. "Quiet. . ."  
  
Poro fluttered aside obliginly, and Tail dropped to all fours, prowling towards the window. She paused a moment before leaping up to the sill, and pressing her face against the glass to angle her gaze downward, and around. But there was nothing. Puzzled she moved the other end of the sill, and did the same there--still, nothing. Sniffing the air at the edges of the window there was only rain, and wet; perhaps underneath lay the faintest hint of something repti--no, not reptillian but almost amphibian, something like both. And. . .digital. But where _was_ i--  
  
"You would be _really_ easy to ambush, you know."  
  
Tail yowled, jumping faintly and consequently falling from the narrow sill--her claws caught in the wood and she pulled herself back up, scrambling faintly. Her tail twitched, ears laying flat but still ringing--the voice had been high enough to hurt, thin and reedy even through the muffling of the glass. And it had come from the one angle she had forgotten to search.  
  
Lowering her head, she rolled her eyes up. And yes. . .there in the edge of visibility was something vividly azure against the outside wall, and one narrowed dark eye looking down at her. Finding itself seen the thing shifted out of her vision--she caught, in the movement, a brief glimpse of small hands with tiny white claws, of large three-toed feet with thick white spades for talons; of a long thin tail before it vanished. "Who are you?" She did not bother keeping the suspicion, or the irritation from her voice.  
  
"Your partners are in trouble, I don't think you _care_ who I am." Tail cringed, putting her hands over her ears to ease the ache in her head. "All of them--you have to follow them."  
  
Poro now close behind her, Tail grit her teeth--it took all of her somewhat considerable self-restraint not to burst through the window and throttle the speaker. "Why should we believe you?"  
  
"Can you afford not to? The Digital World--you have to hurry, _why_ are you nitpicking over this?"  
  
No. The answer was no, of course, because Tailmon already _knew_ that Hikari was in trouble. Poromon already _knew_, even if he didn't realize it, that Miyako was in trouble--and Iori, as well as Takeru, were with her. They _all _knew that Ken was in trouble, and that Daisuke had probably gotten himself _into_ trouble. Behind her she heard and felt Poromon move away, fluttering over to awaken Chibimon and Wormmon; babbling that they had to go back quickly, quickly. Tail growled faintly, and shook her head. Something about this was wrong. . . "Why are you telling us this?"  
  
For a moment there was silence above her, and then the soft skittering of those miniature claws on the brickwork. "Because. . .then you'll have to do the same for me, someday." There was a short _crack_ like whiplash as the azure tail snapped down before the window--the result of the creature, the strange digimon with its ruthlessly soprano voice, turning sharply and somehow skittering away along the building.   
  
"Hey, hold on!" Tail pressed her paws against the window, and, knowing the thing could no longer hear her, scowled. _That_ wasn't any kind of answer, and as much as she wanted to go running off to the Digital World now on the off chance that she _might_ be able to help Hikari by doing so, there was something about this that kept her fur on end and her skin cold. There was something, all truth, inherently _wrong_ abou--  
  
Behind her she heard the rapid babble of worried young voices, the rapid click of computer keys. Her eyes went wide. "W. . .wait, don--"  
  
She whipped around, and leapt from the sill, just in time for the clumsily opened gate to catch hold of her.  
  


**~~~~~~~~~~  
  
**

Creak. Bang. Creak. Bang. Creakbang. Creak--  
  
Taichi stopped in mid-rock as the nurse attendant shot him a dark look. He regarded her for a moment--her nervous hands, her tight lips and edgy eyes--before giving her a look of his own and letting the front legs of the chair fall to the tile floor again. Bang. He held her eyes as he did so, as if challenging her--_daring_ her--to stop him. To tell him to stop. To give him an excuse to beat the shit out of someone here for _anything_. To let him vent his frustration. To--  
  
She looked away, going back to her paperwork, and he scowled. The chair rocked back again. Creak.  
  
The room was irritatingly small, and the noise irritatingly loud within its confined space--the white walls seemed accoustically toned specifically to amplify the rattling sounds, to toss the echoes back and forth between them. Beneath the empty fuzz of the medication Taichi's head throbbed with it, screamed with it and he wondered if maybe it wasn't infinitely worse for him than the bored and nervous nurse. He closed his eyes against the blurry pale room, watching the sound-pain burst against the darkness in hot blue-white.  
  
They wouldn't tell him what was wrong with his sister. Bang.  
  
They seemed to think giving him a shot and holing him up here would change that. Creak.  
  
But he wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't just going to let something like that slide. Bang.  
  
Because they wouldn't tell him what was wrong with his sister, and they wouldn't _help _his sister. Creak.  
  
And he knew, even though those bastards would never admit it, that the only reason they _wouldn't--_ Bang --  
  
was because all these doctors and nurses and experts and specialists -- Creak -- didn't actually have half a goddamned brain between them and -- Bang -- anyway had their collective head so far up their collective _ass_ -- Creak -- they didn't even know what the fucking light of day _wa_--  
  
"Onii-chan!"  
  
Taichi choked at the voice, eyes snapping open--rather than the chair thumping forward again it toppled back as he lost his balance, spilling him onto the floor. His spine made an awkward creak-snap of its own as he crashed to the tiles but he ignored it, rolling over and scrambling to his feet. His eyes were wide now as they darted, searched the room desperately--within the hazy ring the sedatives left around the edge of his vision, he saw he was alone in the room now.   
  
"Hi--" he stopped, his voice small and trembling against the last clattered echoes. Licking his dry lips faintly, he started again. "Hikari. . .?"  
  
"Onii-chan, don't use words like that!"  
  
It took a moment, through the stupor of the shots which were slowly exercising their hold on him, for Taichi to realize that Hikari's voice--too young again, frightened and thin and faintly choking again--was not coming from any point directly in the room. He blinked slowly, lids feeling weighted, and leaned against the wall. "Hikari, where. . .?"  
  
"It. . .I don't. . ." broken by a coughing fit, the voice almost drowned in a crackling static fuzz. "I don't like it, when you use words like that. . ."  
  
Hikari's voice was fading out again, drowning in that sharp hissing roar again. Taichi lurched forward, hands outstretched as if he could see her voice; could catch it and pull it close to him. "I won't! Hikari, where are you?" He thought he was yelling again, maybe screaming out for her again but he couldn't tell because the sedatives muffled and slurred his voice in his own ears. "I. . .I promise Hikari! _Where are y_--"  
  
Stumbling forward he crashed against the wall beside the nurse's empty chair, falling back into the faint indentation of the doorframe. The knob dug hard into the small of his back, a tiny dull pain against the numb wash descending on him. For a moment the entire room was nothing more than that pale blur, the entire world no more than that monotonous digitized hum and he thought, or he _knew_ that the shot had taken hold; that he was going to pass out and lose this brief, this tenuous communication with Hikari. That he was going to lose. . .  
  
His lids fell before the glazing brown eyes, and he slumped, only the catching of the doorknob in his underarm holding him from the ground. The sound had focused to a location somewhere above and to the side, and for one odd moment he almost saw the nurse in her seat again, or rather _through_ her. _Was_ it odd? He wasn't sure; he didn't think so.  
  
_He was going to lose. . .  
  
_What? The metal knob hurt, digging into his armpit, and his side--the feeling was distant, more like sympathy pain for a stranger. Somewhere above and to the side, just beside the nurse that he couldn't quite see--and who must not have been there; surely she would have restrained him by now?--Hikari's choking cough came again, tinny and distant. He tried to look, but his eyes were still closed and refused to be opened again. Stupid shots. . .why did they have to work now? He was. . . going to lose what. . .?   
  
"Hey, Taichi."  
  
He still could not open his eyes, but his head lolled forward--rolled forward so that his chin rest tiredly on his chest, and through the black of his lids he could vaguely see the source of this new voice in the sense that he could vaguely see the nurse. The source was, as the nurse, only a hazy translucent blur; it had replaced the nurse in her chair, a bleary figure of faded blue and green with crossed legs and one foot tapping the air aimlessly. In the white room full of white noise its eyes were white fire, were bright with argent light in a glassy manner; mirrors beneath a fluorescent tracklight sun.   
  
"Hey, Taichi." The voice repeated itself, the too-large eyes--were they eyes? Were they reflections?--turning to face him. The room filled with a smell of blood, of burnt tar and rubber: thick and electric like ozone it seared a line down Taichi's throat and settled in his lungs. It left a taste like the sea in his mouth, too salty so that his mouth went dry and hot. "Did you ever wonder, Taichi. . ."_  
  
_Above and to the side the static shivering continued, Hikari's faint and mournful pleading continued to drown in it; lost and tinny and so far away. Taichi could no longer make out the words, if she still spoke any--only those plaintive, fragile sobs. Did he ever. . .  
  
(_Aren't you afraid, Taichi)  
  
_The figure watched him silently for what should have been a moment--the shot drew it out, stretched the second thin. Was the voice familiar, had he heard it somewhere once   
(_bonesbloodfirehurthatedon'twhynopleasenonotaga--_)   
at some indeterminate point in history? Was it-- The figure shifted again and continued, voice somehow requiring him to hear only its careless words. "Did you ever wonder what happens   
  
(_that you might possibly lose, Taichi)_  
_  
_if you. . ." And here it paused, the inexorable sensation of indefinite familiarity shattered as the voice faltered faintly, as it trembled into soft and almost mournful tones. Through the medication Taichi could no longer hear it--through the white noise of the room he caught it as a counterpoint to Hikari's weeping. "If you. . .forget. . .  
  
_(The thing most precious to you, Taichi. . .)  
  
_"If you forget. . .  
  
_(That she might slip away from you, Taichi)  
  
_to tell them you're sorry sometimes. . .  
  
_(Because inevitably all things will, Taichi, and)  
  
_or what you mean. . .by 'I love you'. . .  
  
_(Sometimes)  
  
_or. . ." The voice choked, swallowed itself hard so the room filled, too, with that harsh sound. Taichi felt himself weeping, felt himself crying out no it can't be I won't let her go but he could not hear that--a thousand other things, the faint tearing of individual threads in his caught shirt but not _that_, not his promises that she would not fade away. That he would never, never let her fade away. . .  
  
_(It's better because)_  
  
The figure reached out--up, and to the side-- and it took a white piece from the white wall into its pale hand, and pressed it up against its pale face. Something red, or blue--a thin stream of color somehow sharp in the blurry world-- slipped down the figure's cheek from the temple, trickled across the hand in a metallic thread.   
  
Another long moment passed--Taichi had the strangest sensation of falling--before the figure moved again: this time the pale hand with the white piece of the white wall reaching out down, and towards him. As the hand approached the buzzsnap grew louder; the static grew louder until it screamed and echoed, until Taichi could see sharp jagged light through the black of his lids like interference on a television screen. He tried to object but his throat closed around the words--I. . .  
  
(_sometimes_)  
  
No, I don't want it-- and beneath the static screech he could still hear Hikari, almost. He could still hear her crying. . .almost.  
  
"Hey, Taichi."  
  
The blue that wasn't really red gathered beneath the pale fingers holding that white piece of the white--no, a. . .a receiver?--and the blue that really wasn't red but was sort of a dark silver and shone mettalic under the harsh tracklight sun balled together, and fell in a heavy drop. Taichi wanted to move but he had the strangest sensation of  
  
(_big brother_)  
  
falling--but he wasn't falling, he could feel the knob digging against his skin and he thought he might be bruised or bleeding-- which would not _let_ him move and instead it fell to spatter against one limp and heavy hand. The liquid burned where it touched, colder than ice and he tried to cry out because it _hurt_ in a numbing way, when his skin buckled and blistered and tore beneath it; a scattered and jittering kind of way that might have been because of the sedatives making their sluggish way through his system. No, I don't want it. No._  
  
_"Hey, Taichi. . ." The pale hand reached down and took his, and it burned as well--his skin rebeled, it froze and cracked and shattered, crumbled away from the cold, cold touch. The pale hand reached down and took his  
  
_(only knows)  
  
_and placed it carefully over the receiver; wrapped the fingers too numb to bleed around the receiver so the bared blistering tissue stuck to the cool plastic. The sound of his skin shattering where the shards hit the ground was loud but so was the receiver--so was the howl of static, the crack-tearing fizzle and deep below. . .deep, deep below he could. . .  
  
"It's for you, Taichi. . ."  
  
His breath caught, hooked and choked in his throat as his unfeeling, throbbing fingers fumbled to remain locked on the phone; as his unfeeling aching muscles struggled to drag his heavy hand to his face. "H. . .huh. . ." It was all that his clenched throat could muster--he could not say her name. Something about this was horrible and unfair--he could save her by speaking somehow, and in this one imperative moment all he could choke out was a short gasp; a hard heavy breath. He could almost hear her under the static--  
  
"Onii-chan I don't feel good. . .Onii-chan please, it's so cold here . . ."  
  
--it was choking her it was drowning her it was _killing _her and he could make it better, all better but he couldn't. He. . .he _couldn't_ . . .  
  
_Sometimes big brother. . .  
  
_Were his eyes opened? He closed them. There was no darkness--the image clarified, the pale figure in faded blue and green sharpened; the huge eyes of white fire sharpened to thick lenses. The figure--no, the boy--stood above him now, and lowered his head. The shadow of ragged bangs obscured the light on his face, and Taichi could see closed eyes behind the glasses; could see the thin streak of red and blue that wasn't blue but was a sort of silver-blue-black tracking down one cheek from the temple like a misplaced tear of not-water, of not-blood.  
  
"I know it's hard, Taichi. But sometimes. . ."  
  
_Onii-chan! Onii-chan please!  
  
_The boy lifted his hands helplessly, palms upward. "Sometimes all we big brothers seem to know. . ."  
  
_I don't want to die, Onii-chan! I don't want it to take me!  
  
_Were his eyes closed? He opened them. The darkness came with hot tears in his eyes--he didn't want to see it anymore, the boy bleeding crimson mercury from his head; the white skin in the white room, the white receiver in his own grey-red hand. He didn't want to see it anymore but he could still see the static shiver across the inside of his eyes, he could still hear it rattle inside his skull trying to hide his sister's voice.  
  
_Don't give up Onii-chan. . .please, please don't give up. . .  
  
_A dry laugh, cold low chuckle which was once again distantly familiar. He no longer cared. "Well, you know by now don't you. Sometimes all we ever know is. . ." There was a pause, and this time no thoughts filled it--only dread. Only black. Only--  
  
"worst."  
  
Something cool and slick slipped up in Taichi's system--it flooded the taste in his mouth with cold copper; it flooded his eyes and synapses with soft silver-blue against the black. The last rigidity slipped from his body, the last resistance slipped from the twitching tendons and muscles. He slumped, slipped from the door onto the cold tiled ground.  
  
No more dread, and no more black.  
  


**~~~~~~~~~~  
  
**

After a moment, the nurse attendant looked up, startled by the sudden halt of the nerve-wracking, repetitive noise. She understood the boy's worry, but he made her uneasy nonetheless--maddened when he had torn into the building; like an animal and _screaming--  
  
_She blinked at the scene before her, then sighed softly in relief; shoulders relaxing from their tense hunch. It would be alright now. She didn't have to worry about him anymore now.  
  
He was slumped in his chair fast asleep, eyes shifting minutely in the hold of some faint drowsy dream. The sedatives, it seemed, had finally done their work.  
  



	12. Falling Down

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
And yes, the lyrics in this chapter _are_ mine.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi and the Batpig Sexgod, who can be found on Fanfiction.net under the pennames of 'Osidiano' and 'Batpig Sexgod'.   
**Author's Note**: This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the disappearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
____________________________________________________________________  
**12  
Falling Down  
  
**

Takeru was not sure when, or why, or exactly _how_ he had come to be lying on his back on the ground in the Digital World--his head throbbing as it was, his lips broken and burned as they were, and his last memory being some hazy recollection of releasing Hikari's hand. He was, however, fairly sure that it was indeed the Digital World he was lying in--eyes opening faintly he could see a jumble of stars in the darkening sky; a mismatched patchwork of constellations seen nowhere above the earth. Only one place in his limited and topsy-turvy line of sight, in fact, was empty of these swiftly appearing points of light. He blinked, once or twice, at the strange thick line of stark black against the twilight purple-blues, and closed his eyes again.  
  
"Piece of _shit_!" A low thump from the vague direction of the black line; another loud curse followed by a rapid scuffling. "_Ow_! Damnit, what the _hell_--"  
  
Groaning faintly, Takeru squeezed his eyes closed tighter, as if by shutting out sight he could banish sound as well. But the voice continued to shout, faintly ragged at the edges, and against the backdrop of Takeru's pounding skull it was too much; hard and ceaseless, maddening. He groaned again, choking on the sound--he wanted to say 'stop it', or 'be quiet' but all that came out was a ragged cough, and the movement pulled at his battered lips. God but they burned. . .  
  
_It hurts so much. Why do we bother, if it hurts. . .so much?  
  
_His eyes shot open, and Takeru tried to sit up--struck by a wave of dizzy nausea, he instead rolled onto his side and vomited onto the ground. He huddled, trembling, over the stinking puddle of his own bile; breath coming in erratic gulps of fast, then slow. He could feel the salt and acid burning his lips, and shuddered. What kind of thought was that to have? What kind of. . .of escapist, of coward, of hopeless fool would think anything at _all_ like that? It wasn't even quite so bad--it hurt, yes, but he had felt worse. He'd been injured worse than this, and hurt more than this, and never once given it a second thought.   
  
Why do we _bother_? God.  
  
The screaming voice was becoming louder all the time, hoarse and gasping as some familiar stranger's throat was torn raw, and it intruded forcefully on Takeru's thoughts. In a way he welcomed the distraction, but. . . Who could they be talking to like that? Nobody deserved that kind of treatment. Takeru almost wanted to get up, just to make them stop. But it hurt too much, and instead he closed his eyes and tried, once again, to shut it out. He almost hated himself for giving up like that. . .but right now he just wanted to go to sleep.  
  
"What are you _doing here?_ You don't belong here--damnit, we got _rid _of you!"  
  
Maybe you did. The thought drifted into his mind's eye absently, and with equal absence Takeru examined it, much as one turned a bauble in their hands. Maybe you _did_ get rid of me, but I'm back now. I don't know how, or why, or where, but I am. Why am I here. . .? He was sure there was a reason. Wasn't there, after all, _always_ a reason for them to be in the Digital world? Why, there was always a reason to be anywhere, probably. For a moment he remembered the blisters on Hikari's lips, the blisters on his own, and wondered if maybe every thing, every reason, wasn't somehow connected.   
  
Takeru relaxed, letting himself lean and then fall back, flat onto the ground again. He would get up in a moment, and shut up whatever cruel bastard was screaming that way, howling that way at whatever poor hapless soul had been targeted. He would get up in a moment, and the creeping doubt, the slinking slithering feeling that something here was fundamentally _wrong_, dangerously flawed, would simply slip away. He opened his eyes to the dizzy, spinning heights of the stars, to the purple sky and the featureless line of black stabbing ruthlessly into it. It was familiar, in a way, like that shouting voice and its offbeat curses. It was familiar in an indistinct way, something halfway remembered, like  
  
_(torn and tar-stained, wild dark hair; vague and creeping sense of)  
  
_some half-heard conversation, someone or something seen in passing and then finally met, an object in a not-quite-noticed photograph. He would get up in a moment, and take a closer look.   
  
But right now his head hurt far, far too much. He was not going to give up, because he had never given up before and this, after all, was not so bad. He would get up in a moment, as soon as he stopped feeling so dizzy and as soon as the sky stopped whirling madly above him, and he would look for Hikari and make everything better again. Yes, in just a moment. . .if only that screaming would stop. . .  
  
Briefly the voice answered his silent plea, but the pause was only momentary--the sound of running footsteps, the revival of the cacophonous shouting noise, now no more than static to Takeru's ringing, aching head. His blistered lips cracked open in a smile as a piece of the spinning sky broke off into shades of tan and auburn, of flame and blue that grasped his shoulders and started to shake him, babbled incoherencies. Did they think the Child of Hope would be kept down so easily? No, he was going to get up, to get up in just a moment, to get up right now--  
  
He tried to blink, but his eyes rolled back. He heard his name called, vaguely as an echo, and his head fell back. He tried to speak, to question, as for one moment his mind cleared of the repetitious fog and delirium, but the words caught in something cold and watery building up in his throat; something warm and copper bubbling out of his throat. For one moment, he remembered and he was afraid.  
  
The moment passed, and so did Takeru. In the closing darkness he was held close, and a gloved hand wiped the trailing blood from his lips, and the high cut on his forehead. In the shadow of the black knife, the dark spire, they waited for something unknown.  
  


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  


The crackle and light warning 'ping' of the bus intercom woke Sora from her light doze. She blinked muzzily, reaching up to rub faintly at her eyes. When had she fallen asleep? She could have sworn she heard her cellphone ring just a moment ago. Puzzled, she reached for it to check her call record. The bus was quiet, except for that soft tone and a faint buzz of static; a sweet sad voice on the radio singing _'if I change myself will you see me, will I be finally good enough? If I cut my wrists and am born again in blood, then is it love?'_. She shivered, because that trembling voice sounded so young. Sounded like it _knew_, somehow, exactly the feeling it was singing about. And wasn't that wrong?  
  
Her hand closed on empty air.  
  
Sora blinked faintly at the feeling of her trimmed nails, at the sensation they made pressing into her slightly numb and tingling palm. Did Mimi have the phone; had she taken it to make a call and chatter at some old acquaintance? _That_ was a realistic scenario, and somehow it annoyed Sora. Mimi could have talked to her, after all. Could have woken her up. Should have. Mimi shouldn't have even _let_ her sleep, they _should_ be talking because they had to work through this, whatever had happened. It was important. In a way it scared her because she didn't understand it--and how had Mimi mistaken someone else for her, especially after hours on the phone, the talk probably laced with secrets and personal details? Sora wrapped her arms around herself and shivered faintly, closing her eyes. Who would know her well enough to carry on that facade? Who _could_?  
  
The phone. She needed to find the phone. She had answered it, hadn't she? Why couldn't she remember. . .?  
  
_'When the world falls down around us,   
does my voice still make you sigh?  
Am I still a fool,  
am I still a wound  
am I worth it in your eyes. . .?'  
  
_The music cut around the words, cracked and whirred for a moment. Started again at the beginning. Sora jumped at the harsh screech it made over the system, head jerking up and eyes opening in surprise. She opened her mouth--why? To ask Mimi what that was all about, not because the other girl might know but just because it had to be asked. Why the same morbidly affectionate track kept playing, sick and sweet. The singing was beautiful but there was something wrong, something _wrong_ with those words, the solemn frightened tremolo of 'oh God please, God _please_' in the voice. Little girls don't sing like that. Little girls don't sing _about _that. Little girls shouldn't have to learn about love as a kind of desperation or depression. She--  
  
Stopped. Sora was aware vaguely that her mouth still hung open wordlessly, that her eyes were widening until they pulled her face into a horror-film mask of confused disbelief. Her hand reached out again, this time her grip seeking Mimi's beside her, but she knew without looking what she would find. Why hadn't she noticed before?  
  
Her hand closed on empty air.   
  
She was alone on the bus.   
  
No. That was wrong. Rather, she was almost alone. There was still that horrible song, after all, over and over again, snapping and cutting over the speakers. It made her want to clamp her hands over her ears and scream, just to drown it out. There was one other person, as well, and they did not seem to be bothered by the weeping alto on the radio or the wide-eyed redhead staring at them in shock blooming into fear--smiling, the expression not quite kind and not quite sane; faintly crooked or canted like a dramatic camera angle, or the doors of a ship in rough weather. It made Sora sick--it made the young man who leaned over the back of his seat into the space of hers look snake-slick and risky like some kind of killer, casually and in a quiet sort of way. Very Ted Bundy, but with his careless blonde hair and fine face so much more appealing. Hannibal Lecter crossed her mind briefly and she had to bite her tongue to keep, for some reason, from laughing. His arms were crossed over the seat, and despite the clear 'no smoking' signs pasted up across the walls of the bus a cigarette smoldered between two of his graceful fingers, smoking itself to the filter. Sora did not realize she could not see his eyes until she followed that lazy film of white smoke, drifting up before a pair of simple polarized sunglasses. There was something familiar about them--about _him_, she knew him like the back of her hand; the listless cant of the cigarette in his fingers, the fall of his bangs across his forehead, the quirk of his brow and the way he leaned forward--but with his eyes hidden he struck her with a wrenching sense of anonymity.  
  
If he killed her, all she would ever see would be that smile.  
  
It was that thought which broke her trance, and Sora jerked back with a harsh gasp, pressing herself into her seat and staring at the young man in front of her, realizing that she had been drawing slowly, inexorably closer to him. Her breath came out again in a rush of air, and settled into a staccato pattern of shorter breaths, rapid and shallow. Her lungs seemed incapable of functioning properly, with his unseen eyes upon her. She found her hand--trembling, for some reason now--creeping away, searching for the cord that would signal a stop. She could not see a driver on the bus anymore, but it was still moving. Maybe--  
  
"It's all just a dream, Sora." He took a long drag on his cigarette, but did not breathe the smoke back out. "And this one, you're driving. But dream-buses, you know, are loathe to stop for anyone. Maybe the driver most of all." His smile changed, a faint casual smirk; the look of one who did not smile for even his friends but gave them _this_, and a something more, and more important in the voice and the eyes which was not evident here. It left the expression cold, distant.  
  
She knew him.   
  
She knew that smile and she knew his face--even hidden by sunglasses and smoke she knew it--but most of all she knew that voice; deep with secrets and like music, in a way, even when speaking. It hit her like a slap in the face, that familiarity even the voice's tainted edge of sibilance, a hiss like static or the distant sea could not diminish, and Sora jerked her head to the side. She stared now through only one wide eye, the other rolling and searching. For an exit. If this was a dream, a nightmare, surely there must be a way back to the waking world?  
  
As if in deference to her recognition he flicked his wrist slightly, drew himself up in his seat to take a small, flourishing court bow. Again, the cigarette came to his mouth and again, no smoke exited. "Took your sweet time, didn't you dearest? But ah, that's you isn't it." He flashed a grin at her around the filter--a glimpse of madly bared teeth, white as moonlight and sharp as needles. She choked. "You're as much of a bitch as I am about that. We ought to start a club."   
  
Sora simply shook her head, denied the experience the words the sight of the those long white teeth, the fangs of a snake but all through his mouth as if his head had been stuffed with needles. She felt tears welling in her eyes. "Y. . .Ya--"  
  
She had tried, she thought, to tell him to stop. Or to ask him why. Or. . .something. Anything. Anything to break the madness. But he held his hand up and cut her off with a sharp 'ah!', and twisted out of his seat shaking one finger at her like a disapproving parent. "Ah-ah now, Sora-chan. You don't get to wake up just yet. Maybe you're wrong, anyway." Another long drag, another dearth of smoke. The cigarette remained from the first inhalation unchanged in size, still smoked just almost to the quick. "Maybe I'm not who you think I am. Maybe I'm the boogie man." It seemed to amuse him and he laughed--not the laugh it should have been but a low chuckle, sea-deep and sliding, sibilant as steam. It made her head pound, like the edge of old static clinging to his voice. "Maybe if you give me his name, you'll sell me his soul. And that wouldn't do--not yours to sell, you know."  
  
He was standing in the aisle right beside her seat, and for a horrible moment she thought he would sit down next to her. He just stood there though, and she shrunk back against the wall of the bus, curled up and slid down trying to make herself smaller; make herself disappear. Her mouth felt full of salt and cotton, tasted full of copper and fear. "Th-then. . .who. . .?"  
  
His smile then was familiar again, the careless for-the-camera half smirk, a lilt of the lips that moved nothing else of his face, and for that familiarity it was worse than the nest of long teeth or the cold crooked serial-killer smile. He drew off of the cigarette once more, and this time closed his hand around it as he finished, so that the smell of ash and burned flesh seemed to fill the bus. His smile did not falter. "Him. You. Strangers. Friends. Me." As if he had saved it all up somewhere inside he blew smoke from his lips now, a long stream of grey-white that hovered and clung before curling away from him. It seemed. . .alive, twisting in the air like some great and incorporeal blind serpent.   
  
Sora was entranced by it, for a moment, until the pale smoke began to curl up her leg, her arm, around her neck--cold as ice and slick as glass it numbed her, burned like frostbite. Struggling, ripping at it with fingers which simply passed through and scraped her own blistering skin, she screamed.  
  
_'I will be a fool if it please you,  
I will paint my sky to black.  
Is it perfect if you bid me 'jump';  
and I try to fly  
and don't look back?'  
  
_He was walking away with his hands held out to the side, his head back as if he appealed to God, as if he reveled in rain or sunlight and he was singing, singing the words with the song loud like he had never wanted, never needed a microphone to make his voice heard. The echo caught in the bus like a bell, deafening. Over the sound of her screaming, he laughed.   
  
"Next stop the Dreamworld, the Wakinglands, cradle of the mind!" Stopped at the head of the bus, he whipped around to face the length again, and gripped the handle of the bus' emergency brake. His smile never changed but it burned into Sora's mind even as she struggled--she did not look at him once but she could _see_ him, even as she struggled with the intangible serpent, tearing gouges in her own skin. "Take no prisoners, leave no soul behind! You ain't seen _nothin'_ yet."  
  
The gears ground, screamed, set the bus to shuddering when he ripped out the brake with a squall of torn metal. Sora found herself jerked back, head cracking glass, and flung forward into the aisle. Her vision spun--smoke and serpent and nightmare. Grinning, laughing nightmare with simple black shades and another smoldering cigarette in his hand, smoked almost to the filter.  
  
_'All I want is a reason,  
but all I need is a smile.  
Just a moment in time,  
and the world would be mine,  
for a wonderful,  
woeful small while. . .'  
  
Crack. Silence. Stutter and scream on the speakers.  
  
'When the world falls down around us--'  
  
_


	13. Foundlings

**DISCLAIMER**: I do NOT own Digimon or related chars. Damn. I do however own any original creatures, characters, and concepts (except where SPECIFICALLY noted), including this dumb fic. And while there's not much I could actually do to you should you for some reason steal my crap, I WILL put a hex on you. So THERE.  
**Specific notation alert**: Teyu is property of my sister Sammi and the Batpig Sexgod, one of whomcan be found on Fanfiction.net under the penname 'Batpig Sexgod'. Yeah.  
**Author's Note**: This story is faintly AU (or would that be AC?) from the actual series--BelialVamdemon never happened. In fact, nothing after the release of Quinlongmon and the disappearance of BlackWargreymon happened. Okay? Given that, this takes place one year after 02. I already told you this repeatedly. =P  
____________________________________________________________________  
**13  
Foundlings  
  
  
**

"--Does my voice still make you sigh? Am I still a wound, am I still a fool--"  
  
The voice was male. The voice was loud, and both horribly off-key and out of timing with the tinny scratch of music from beside and behind it. The voice sounded ragged as if from laughter or screaming, or a wound to the neck. The voice was the first thing Mimi heard as her hazy mind drifted towards conciousness, and the voice cut itself off abrubtly in the middle of mauling yet another line of sad and vaguely familiar song when she groaned, and lifted an arm to drape over her face. The voice was unfamiliar, and she wanted no more strangeness today.  
  
"Hey! Hey, lady-girl-m'am-thing?" The music snapped off, and the source of the voice coughed. She had the sense of someone doubling over just beside her as he hacked drily, shaking with the action. She wondered if he was sick, and tried to sit up; forced herself to sit up. Her arm slid from her face, but she still could not see--her eyes refused to open. She tried to ask why, but her throat seemed sealed shut. She whimpered faintly.  
  
"No, ho--" Cut off choking again, but not before he lay his hand over one of hers. The stranger squeezed faintly, and Mimi realized that her hand had been numb only because the action brought a faint tingle of life back to her fingertips. "Hold on. Don't be scared, aight? Have you fixed up in no time. _Echak. Oudae."  
  
_The words cut, sharp, and with the sounds stabbing into her ears Mimi felt a weight torn from her eyelids, a clamp rip loose from her throat. She gasped, clutching at her neck, almost expecting it to be split open and bleeding, but of course it was not. Slightly swollen, nothing more. Her hand jerked up to her eyes, and these too remained unmarked. They opened to an unfocused haze, now, and a faintly flickering yellow-red light against darkness. In the wake of the stranger's strange words the air crawled with a sensation which was not burning, was not freezing but simply _was_, and was wrong. In a way it reminded her of biology--of dissection, the feel of flesh waiting to decay but unable to and so simply sick, and dead, and old. Heavy. The stink of blood and burning cloth hung close by, around the blur of the stranger. She gagged, but her system clenched tightly against the action, empty.   
  
Something cool and damp--a bottle, a water bottle--was pressed into her clenched hands, and she took it, fumbling the cap off and drinking greedily. The retching actions had scathed her swollen throat, making her realize how thirsty she was. She felt as if she had run a mile in high summer, sore muscles making themselves known as slowly as her vision cleared itself in the unsteady light. She vaguely heard another voice, behind the stranger, speaking, but it received no reply. Her benefactor was once again bent over coughing. The smell of burning cloth melded into that of flesh, making Mimi's stomach lurch again.  
  
Firelight. That was the flickering yellow-red, that was the soft cracking she could hear somewhere in the lulls between sounds. It must have been behind the stranger, because as he came into focus he was little more than a silhouette with short wild hair and a short-sleeved jacket over dirty clothes; a set of hunched and shuddering shoulders. His eyes were closed tight against the wracking jerk of each gasp, one gloved hand clamped over his mouth. A faint line of smoke trickled out between two of his fingers, a few small spots of blood dripped from the lower line of his hand. The glove was torn--burned--and his skin bubbled faintly where the blood touched, blackened and curled as if struck by acid. The bottle fell from Mimi's hands, water icy but unfelt where it spilled across her lap before falling to the ground, and when she bit her fist to stifle a scream the stranger did not seem to notice. Only kept coughing, choking, burning where blood hissed and bubbled from mouth to hand.  
  
Something gripped her shoulders, and the scream came out.  
  


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  
  


"Look--I'm _sorry_. I didn't mean to scare her. Okay?"  
  
It was a large fire. Not a bonfire, to be sure, but a large fire nonetheless, which cast a sizable amount of light and shadow across the small, weary circle of adolescents huddled about its perimeter like refugees. For the most part they seemed unaware of it, though--of its heat, its light, its slow burning death in the center of them all. Some ignored it to stare upward, to watch the sparks fling themselves into the cold sky scattered with myriad stars. Some stared into it, through it, past it. One, despite sitting as close as his friends would allow, huddled deeply into a pile of jackets and shivered, mumbling a name over and over and over again. Glazed brown eyes stared down with heavy lids into his lap, perhaps working through the drugs and perhaps fixating on the mangled and bandage-cloaked mess which had, that morning so many age-long hours ago, been his hand.  
  
Miyako flinched as she her took her eyes from the battered ring of her friends, chosing to favor Daisuke with a tired glare rather than continuing to bandage Mimi's bitten knuckle. Really, Mimi would be alright. It was only a little shock, and a little bite. Like herself and Iori, and Daisuke, Mimi seemed to have come through easily; without pain or shock or the hideous long strings of frostbite and blister marring her skin. She was lucky. They--all three of them--were very, very lucky.  
  
Daisuke shifted, eyes wandering away from Miyako and back to the fire as he rubbed the side of his head gingerly. ". . .I'm just saying you didn't have to hit me."   
  
She watched his eyes move from fire to Taichi once again, and her glare softened. Daisuke had been doing that, she was certain, since he or the older boy had been found--whichever had happened first. Certainly since she and Iori had stumbled upon this clearing he had been doing it, and wringing his hands and running them through his spiky short hair. He had developed the actions as nervous habits over the course of only a few hours. She hadn't really meant to hit him. She hadn't meant to hit him any more than he had meant to frighten Mimi, but it had happened because right now they were all crazy, and tired. None of them would sleep--probably none of them could except for poor Jyou, dozing lightly where he sat after playing impromptu medic to the worst of them and eyes jerking beneath the lids, legs twitching occasionally as if he dreamed of running--but they were. Miyako was glad that whatever had brought them back here so violently was over.  
  
_You ain't seen _nothin'_ yet._  
  
Words burned into the back of her lids, a memory of the blank monitor and flowing script. Miyako bit her lip, shook her head, looked back down to Mimi's hand to be sure the bandage was secure. She didn't want to think like that. About that. She had seen, in less than twenty-four hours, more than she ever wanted to see again. Ever. She could go blind in this very moment, and she felt that if this was 'nothing' she would not regret the loss of sight.   
  
". . .I forgive you, Daisuke." Mimi, trying to be lighthearted if the cracked lilt to her voice was any indication. "Smile! Be happy."  
  
Daisuke looked at her a little oddly, before his face relaxed into an almost-smile. Miyako envied the two of them their strained senses of gallows humor. She wanted to share it with them so much, to pretend she had forgotten the blank gazes of their closest friends, so close and so far away. That she had forgotten, already, the sliding hiss of that familiar voice and the careless cursive sprawling across the heart monitor. Pretend that it was a dream. She--  
  
Daisuke's response, Miyako's thoughts, were interrupted by a hoarse voice.  
  
"'Cause forgiveness is divine, right?" With a faint grunt, the strange boy who seemed to have pulled together the first puzzled stragglers dropped to a crouch, then a sitting position between Miyako and Daisuke on the ground. From one pocket his portable radio jutted, silent except for a few strainging chords of harsh guitar filtering through the broken headphones tucked next to it. It sounded like some kind of heavy metal, screaming and discordant--such perfect music for the mood; too perfect so that Miyako had to grind out an urge to smash the tiny machine apart on the ground. Oblivious, the stranger pulled a handful of small, pill-shaped objects from a pocket and popped a few into his mouth, chewing reflectively and grimacing when teeth accidentally scraped his bleeding lip. "Yeah. Jellybeans?"  
  
"Uhm. . ."  
  
"Sure thing." Daisuke reached out almost before Miyako seemed to have realized that the word was an offer. It said something about him, she was sure, that even in a crisis he freely took candy from strangers.   
  
She bit her lip to stifle a laugh, and pat Mimi's hand lightly. Maybe she too had a form of humor here--it tasted more like madness when her dry lips split under her teeth. "Good as new."  
  
"Thanks."  
  
Silence again, except for the two boys chewing their candy and the pop of the fire; Taichi's deliriously monotonous mumbling of his sister's name and the wind through the trees, the tinny muffled howl of distorted guitars. It made Miyako want to scream, just to fill the silence with some other sound. Mimi looked as if she felt the same way.  
  
"So you guys. . .you all know each other, huh?"  
  
"Mm-hmn. We're all good friends." Again, the lilt in Mimi's voice. It was, maybe, the same one that had always been there, but now it sounded so mad. So desperate. It was as bad, to Miyako, as the silence. "Been together for years."  
  
The boy nodded, reaching up and shaking his wild bangs--in the darkness and fireglow they seemed to be a shade of vivid purple-blue--from his face. He looked somber behind his smile, with the shadows pooling beneath his eyes, with his lips and chin gouged by burns, stained with blood. "Yeah? Man, crazy stuff. Who'da thought, right?"  
  
"Well." Mimi drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around them and letting her chin rest thoughtfully on her knees. "It won't be the first time we've popped into the Digital World without warning. Just. . ." She shivered. "A lot scarier this time. Will everyone be okay?"  
  
At the words 'Digital World', the stranger's brows had shot up, and his eyes fixed on Mimi. The look he gave her was strange--not in a bad way, Miyako thought, but simply strange--and when he opened his mouth to speak but clamped it shut around another fistful of candy, it gave her a bad feeling. A chill. _Echak. Oudae. _He had spoken them like a benediction over her and Iori as well as Mimi--words like knives that left the air crackling and seemed to set his blood afire. What did they mean? The boy rubbed at his throat, then his head.   
  
". . .Crazy stuff," He finally said, the words sounding almost lame. They sounded like a substitute for whatever he had meant to say--something important? Something innane?--and Miyako did not like that idea, that their mysterious new friend might be hiding something. His hand moved to the back of his neck, and he rubbed at that too. "But. . .okay? Shit, I ain't no doctor. The blond kid with the blisters--"  
  
"Takeru," Mimi supplied.  
  
"--Yeah, I guess. He'll be fine. And the redheads, and the tall guy with the glasses. They'll all be fine, outside of the burns and crap. Don't know what's up with those. But the rest, the crazy stuff is just Rimshock, y'know? Breach Gates--I think that's what gotcha here--they'll do that to you, the shock thing, even if you've hopped 'em before. Especially into the Overworld." He nodded, ignoring the glances of confusion the three others cast each other over his head. "Hate the Overworld. And that short kid, went off to what, look for something? He seemed pretty okay. The other one though. . ." A shake of the head, a helpless shrug. He looked as lost as any of them. "I'm no doctor. His hand looked bad."  
  
Sora and Koushiro. Jyou. Iori. Miyako felt her own hands clenching and clasping, and she moved them to cross over her chest, gripping her elbows. Obviously the boy thought she and Daisuke and Mimi were alright, and really they were. She felt as if she shouldn't have let Iori go off on his own, but really he would be alright too. Taichi though. . .she hadn't seen his hand. Maybe Daisuke had, because his head jerked to one side abruptly, and he looked away. It wasn't really his hand that worried her, anyway, and it probably wasn't what worried the others. The thing that she--and everyone else, probably--was really worried about was Taichi. Just Taichi.  
  
And Hikari. And Yamato. And Ken. Because where were _they_? Had they come into the Digital World as she and Iori had, half-delirious and stumbling from darkness into light, hanging on to each other, to something, anything familiar to maintain a shred of sanity around the roar of static in their ears, the horrible sibilant laughter? Had they come as Sora had been found, screaming and ripping long bloody gashes into blistered skin with broken nails; screaming for silence, screaming until the body would scream no more and only gasp, each breath coloring the lips with blood? Had they come as Koushirou, staring dully ahead with glazed and mindless eyes until touched--the stranger had warned them not to touch him when they arrived and found him gazing into the fire but she had anyway, on accident--when he jerked backward with a shriek  
  
_(No, no not lying please don't, please, not again--!)  
  
_and then fell silent, to stare again unmoving for hours on end? As Jyou, in a nightmare-muddled sleep, speech slurred and movements stumbling? Were they maybe--and this seemed too much to hope for--still back home in Tokyo, safe and sound? Did they know what was going on?   
  
_(People don't just dissapear)_  
  
_(Hikari-chan's an awful long ways away. . .so much farther than a hospital bed)  
  
_No. Miyako closed her eyes, and shivered. No, they weren't safe at home, and no, they did not know what was going on any more than any of the others did. But they knew what was happening. Whatever had brought them here--whatever force, whatever reason--it would not leave those three behind. It had, could have, no reason. And so she wondered where they could be, and how they were faring there, all alone. And she was afraid.  
  
Silence again. The sounds of Daisuke standing, mumbling excuses for something known only to himself; of Mimi getting up to sit by Sora where the other girl sat alone, hands over her ears and eyes lidded. Alone with the stranger, Miyako could hear him shifting, and muttering to himself. "Good kids, damnit. Why d'ya hafta pick the good kids? Such a--ah! Ow, okay! Okay!" Another cough, the faint hiss of blood burning skin and the smell of scorched cloth.  
  
Echak. Oudae.  
  
_Have you fixed up in no time.  
  
--just Rimshock, y'know?  
  
_Echak. Oudae.   
  
It did not make her feel any better.  
  



End file.
